People who derive their strongest sense of identity and fulfillment from their careers may be contributing to a global decline in fertility, according to a new report that suggests many policies designed to help with work-life balance are apt to fail.
In “More Work, Fewer Babies: What Does Workism Have to Do with Falling Fertility,” released Thursday, Institute for Family Studies senior fellow Laurie DeRose and research fellow Lyman Stone argue that the rise of work-focused personal values “can also mean that many men and women find their preferred balance to be more work and less family.”
Fertility has become a major topic as birth rates have plummeted worldwide, including in high-income countries. In America, the rate is low enough to cause concern about future economic growth, labor-force pressures and what will happen to the social safety net, among other things. The issue has garnered notice of not just demographers and academics, but of policymakers. In a separate discussion with American Compass Thursday, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, noted that if the rate of births in the United States had remained at 2008 levels, 5.8 million more Americans would have been born to contribute to the economy in coming decades.
For DeRose and Stone, salient to the ongoing discussion is how people individually rank the importance of work and family. “Workism” is the idea that one’s identity derives from one’s career, while “familism” holds family as more important. Where individuals, cultures and countries place those values likely impacts their fertility rates, they said.
“When you look at contemporary low fertility in developed countries and you think the solution is to give more and more emphasis to work-centered programs, you’re missing the boat,” said Stone. “That is to say, if you’re worried about low fertility, more generous parental leave is a great thing. I love it. But it’s ultimately a work subsidy, not a parenting subsidy, because parents who aren’t workers don’t get it.”
Better, they said, are policies that help families function regardless of whether, for example, both partners work or one parent stays home with young children.
“To the extent that family policy helps encourage more time at work, policies aimed at achieving work-life balance may be doomed to failure,” the report said. “Reforms that substantially reduce the burden of market work on families are more likely to yield benefits in the long run.”
Read More: Does America’s focus on work identity lead to fewer babies?