Parenthood and Job Routinization: The Role of Family and Labour Market Policies

Alicia Adsera, Princeton University
Magdalena Grabowska, University of Warsaw
Anna Matysiak, University of Warsaw
Federica Querin , University of Bologna

Profound structural changes in European labour markets—driven by technological progress—reshaped the nature of work and altered the conditions under which individuals form families. Digital technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, are transforming jobs by automating routine tasks. Thus, occupations with high levels of routinisation—characterised by repetitive, automatable tasks—are increasingly associated with limited career advancement and heightened employment insecurity. These developments may have significant implications for fertility, especially in countries with weak employment protection and limited welfare support. In this study, we examine how these transformations—often described as de-routinisation—shape fertility behaviour across Europe. Drawing on longitudinal EU-SILC data from 2005–2024 for 27 countries, we link data on births to task-based occupational measures derived from ESCO database, following Matysiak et al. (2025). We account for both partners’ occupational characteristics to capture household-level exposure to routine work. Our two dependent variables are births up to age 37 and transitions to a(nother) child. We use multilevel models to assess how the relationship between routine-task intensity and birth transitions is moderated by labour market and family policies, such as generosity of social benefits, scope of active labour market policies, and stringency of employment protection legislation. We expect employment in routine-intensive occupations to be associated with lower fertility, but that these negative effects are attenuated by strong family and employment support. By integrating micro-level occupational data with macro-level policy indicators, this study provides a comparative and policy-sensitive understanding of how the changing content of work influences family formation in Europe.

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 Presented in Session 41. Fertility, Family Policies and Labour Markets