Suspended workers, abortions and fertility.

[Download Paper]

We investigate the effect of an Italian job suspension policy aimed at counteracting the spread of Covid-19 on the fertility patterns of Italian women, with a focus on abortions (VPTs). In March 2020, the government forbade a set of “non-essential” activities; hence, we exploit the variability in the share of suspended workers across Italian municipalities to assess the impact of closures on abortion rates (AR), and pregnancy rates turning into live births 9 months later. Relying on outstanding administrative data on VPTs and births, we find that, the overall drops in abortions due to social distancing notwithstanding, municipalities in the fourth quartile of the suspended workers’ distribution saw a positive effect on quarterly ARs (between 10-13% the average pre-pandemic rate), compared to those belonging to the lower tail; the impact is mostly driven by industrial suspensions. A non-significant effect is retrieved on births. We employ socio-economic information to inquire about potential mechanisms. Plus, for the first time in the research with the same data, we exploit information on past reproductive behavior of the aborting women. The effect on abortions is driven mostly by married women, not in professional condition. Plus, and more interestingly, by those who previously had pregnancies (1 or 2 children). By contrast, the occupational sector of the aborting women is independent on the sector of the job suspension share, while the industrial sector-driven effect linked to married women OLF hints that, for those who seek for abortion, male partners’ work trajectories matter more than theirs in the context of such decision-making process, thus revealing potential mechanisms for the exposure of gender imbalances within the impacted couples.

Keywords: Abortion, Covid-19, Essential sectors, Live births, Work suspension.

JEL Classification: I12, I18, J13, J16.

Presented at:

• Internal seminar of the second year PhD Students in Economics and Finance (DEFAP) (Department of Economics and Finance, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy - Jan 2024)
• Second PhD Conference in Social Sciences and Economics (Department of Social Science and Economics, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy - Sep 2024)
• XXXVI SIEP Conference 2024 - Reimagining Welfare: Sustainable Paths in Public Finance (Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy - Sep 2024)
• Internal seminar of the third year PhD Students in Economics and Finance (DEFAP) (Department of Economics and Finance, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy - Oct 2024)
• 17th UniTO-Collegio Carlo Alberto Ph.D. Workshop in Economics (Poster Session) (Collegio Carlo Alberto – University of Turin, Turin, Italy - Nov 2024)
• PhD & Post-Doc UniMi Brown Bag Seminars (Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods, University of Milan, Italy - Dec 2024)
• Fourth Winter Symposium in Economics and Finance (Deparment of Economics and Finance, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy - Dec 2024)
• UB School of Economics PhD Seminars (School of Economics, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain - Feb 2025)
• 1st Workshop IdEP in Sustainable Economics (Institute of Economics, Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Airolo, Switzerland - Mar 2025)