1 Low-Skilled Immigration and Work-Fertility Tradeoffs Among High-Skilled US Natives By DELIA FURTADO AND HEINRICH HOCK*

Fertility and labor force participation are simultaneous outcomes of a single time-allocation decision. Empirical work by economists has largely focused on identifying a causal effect of childbearing on employment using a variety of mechanisms to provide variation in fertility that is exogenous to other determinants of family and work decisions. However, a parallel demographic literature is devoted to understanding the extent and determinants of the tradeoff (or “role incompatibility”) that women face in their allocation of time between working and parenting (Karin L. Brewster and Ronald R. Rindfuss 2000). The most-often used measure of role incompatibility is the correlation between fertility and female labor force participation (FLFP). Cross-country research focuses on the substantial differences in family policies, childcare availability, unemployment rates, stability of labor contracts, and gender norms that may result in international differences in the correlation between childbearing and work (Brewster and Rindfuss 2000; Alicia Adsera 2004). Although numerous studies continue to document a negative individual-level relationship between childbearing and FLFP, the within-country correlation between the two has weakened substantially in the past fifty years, especially in the United States (Henriette Engelhardt, Tomas Kögel, and Alexia Prskawetz 2004). We argue that a partial explanation for this phenomenon is the steady stream of low-skilled immigration, which increased the affordability of childrearing for high-skilled US natives