Institutional Gender Inequality and Fertility Timing Across Countries
Masaaki Yoshimori *
McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Background: Fertility behavior is a key area of economic and demographic research because of its strong connections to human capital formation, labor market outcomes, and long-term economic development. Early childbearing is particularly important as it can adversely affect women's educational attainment, employment opportunities, and lifetime earnings, while also generating lasting intergenerational consequences.
Aims: This study asks whether institutional gendered constraints shift the distribution of first births rather than affecting overall fertility levels.
Study Design: A longitudinal cross-country panel study combining a continuous-time life-cycle model with fixed-effects econometric analysis.
Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted using annual country-level data from 100 countries worldwide obtained from the World Bank, UNESCO, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), covering the period between 1990 and 2023.
Methodology: The paper combines a continuous-time life-cycle model with a strongly balanced panel of 100 countries observed annually from 1990 to 2023. Fertility timing is proxied by adolescent first births, capturing mass in the lower tail of the first-birth distribution. Gender inequality is measured using the UNDP Gender Inequality Index. Two-way fixed-effects models exploit within-country variation over time and allow for nonlinear and dynamic specifications.
Results: The study analyzed a balanced panel of 100 countries from 1990 to 2023 comprising 3,400 country–year observations. Higher Gender Inequality Index (GII) values were significantly associated with earlier fertility timing in fixed-effects models (β = 0.0126, SE = 0.0057, p < 0.05), and the relationship remained robust after controlling for gender development and schooling. Lagged models showed similar positive effects of prior gender inequality on early fertility timing (β = 0.0108, SE = 18.90, p < 0.10). Nonlinear specifications revealed significant regime dependence ( F = 18.90 , p < 0.001), with stronger effects in highly unequal environments. Dynamic models further showed strong persistence in fertility timing over time (β = 0.981 , SE = 0.004, p < 0.001).
Conclusions: Institutional gender inequality reduces incentives to delay childbearing by lowering the opportunity cost of early fertility. The findings indicate that fertility timing responds primarily to structural constraints rather than short-term fluctuations.
Keywords: Gender inequality, fertility timing, early childbearing, first birth, human capital, institutional constraints, panel fixed effects