More Fertility Fun

Yesterday I investigated a putative relationship between housing and fertility. I suspected that unemployment was probably a more reliable predictor. Well, unemployment data is pretty easy to come by so I poked around a bit. A one-year lag between unemployment and total fertility rate for recent data yields a visually pleasing fit.Unemployment for Q1 2009 is currently estimated at 8.1% with the March estimate at 8.5%. So this model is more pessimistic than the housing model, and predicts a 2010 total fertility rate of 2.02 (vs. 2.04 for the new housing sales based predictor); or possibly worse if unemployment continues to degrade over the year.

So the models are predicting between 0.06 and 0.08 drop in total fertility rate in a 2 year period (2008 was 2.1). This kind of movement is not unprecedented; there was a 0.05 drop from 1991-1993 and again from 2000-2002. It would be an usually large drop, but this is an usually harsh recession, so it does not seem unreasonable.

One interesting question to ponder are the possible mechanisms for lower fertility during recessions: less sex happening, higher use of birth control, or more abortions?