Changes in Employment Uncertainty and the Fertility Intention–Realization Link: An Analysis Based on the Swiss Household Panel

How do changes in employment uncertainty matter for fertility? Empirical studies on the impact of employment uncertainty on reproductive decision-making offer a variety of conclusions, ranging from gender and socio-economic differences in the effect of employment uncertainty on fertility intentions and behaviour, to the effect of employment on changes in fertility intentions. This article analyses the association between a change in subjective employment uncertainty and fertility intentions and behaviour by distinguishing male and female partners’ employment uncertainty, and examines the variation in these associations by education. Using a sample of men and women living in a couple from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP 2002–2011), we examine through multinomial analysis how changes in employment uncertainty and selected socio-demographic factors are related to individual childbearing decisions. Our results show strong gendered effects of changes in employment uncertainty on the revision of reproductive decisions among the highly educated population.     

Rethinking certification theory and the educational development of the United States and Germany

This essay places work certification at the center of all modern educational regimes. I sketch the growth of the education, training, and certification systems of the United States and Germany in new ways, highlighting the role of their highly divergent certification regimes in shaping them. Whereas Germany's education and training system, anchored in the economy through employers’ associations and unions, accords well with human capital models, American practice, governed primarily by academic interests divorced from the economy, fits much better with credentialist theory. I consider how the absence of meaningful work certification at the secondary level in the US negatively affects educational justice and has encouraged the creation of a costly, inegalitarian system of higher education. Finally, I conclude with an assessment of human capital, signaling, control, and credentialist theories of certification, one that finds them all to some degree wanting.