LabFam seminar series: Family Policies – a remedy against low fertility?
Gerda Neyer, University of Stockholm
Over the past two decades, many demographers and political actors have focused on family policies as the key factor of fertility development and fertility behavior in Europe and other post-industrial societies. In general, family policies that promote a gender-egalitarian division of employment and care are seen as the panacea against below-replacement fertility, while those that refrain from altering the gendered division of employment and care are considered to lead to irreversibly low fertility levels. Recent labor-market and fertility developments seem to challenge these propositions.
In the LabFam seminar, I will present research findings that highlight the complex interactions between family policies, labor market aspects, and fertility in order to contribute to the current debates on research perspectives and research strategies to analyze and explain fertility developments in post-industrial countries.
About the speaker: political scientist, demographer, and researcher at Stockholm University. Her research concerns fertility developments in the Nordic countries and on how welfare states, family policies, and gender issues are interlinked to shape fertility development and fertility behavior.