A Biographic/Demographic Analysis of the Relationship Between Fertility and Occupational Activity for Women and Married Couples

Abstract

In this paper the analytical tools of the biographic theory of fertility are applied to the analysis of interdependencies of life course events which are usually treated seperately by sociologists on the one hand and economists on the other hand.

This paper is based on the theoretical concepts used in the research project “Labour Market Dynamics and Reproductive Behaviour” which I am directing since 1984 and which was funded by the German Research Society. The “biographic approach” propounded here arose out of this project within the framework of which a survey of 1,576 biographies was made and the theory applied. The results presented in this paper are confined to those which serve to illustrate the main parts of the theory. A full report on the empirical results will be published by my colleagues and myself in the near future. Thus, although solely responsible for the theoretical content of this paper, I would like to take this opportunity of thanking E.-J. Flöthmann and I. Reiter for their empirical work, in particular for that included here.