An analysis of the relationship between women's employment and fertility rate in Iran

One of the biggest developments of the recent decades has been dramatic women’s participation in social and economic fields, and in this regard, the relationship between women’s participation in the labor market as one of the important and influential factors in economic growth, and fertility rate as one of the effective factors in population growth, has been taken into account. Many empirical studies have shown the relationship between women’s employment and fertility rate to be negative. On the one hand, many researchers found that in the European countries, there was a negative correlation between these two variables in the labor market before the 1980s, while the correlation became positive afterwards. Therefore, in this study, using 1360-1392 annual data, extracted from central bank and statistical center of Iran, and ARDL BOUND TESTING approach, we investigate the relationship between employment rate and fertility. The findings indicate that the impact of marriage age, urbanization rate, and per capita income on fertility rate is negative while the effect of women’s employment rate on fertility rate is positive. This indicates that, increased employment rate and thereby creation of financial security give rise to an increase in the tendency for fertility among women; therefore, the negative relationship shown in previous studies is not confirmed.