Childcare and geographical mobility in southern Europe

• Author: Ildefonso MENDEZ
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2015.00032.x
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Date: 01 December 2015

International Labour Review, Vol. 154 (2015), No. 4

Copyright © The author 2015

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2015

Childcare and geographical mobility

in southern Europe

Ildefonso MENDEZ*

Abstract. This article investigates the association between the availability of child-

care and low geographical mobility in southern Europe where, the author argues,

couples that have or plan to have children live close to their parents in order to

reconcile work and family life by taking advantage of their mothers’ low labour

force participation rate. He presents a behavioural model showing couples’ fertil-

ity, female employment and mobility decisions, and tests the model’s predictions

using ECHP data. The deterrent effect of a woman working on the couple’s mo-

bility is found to be signicant only for couples who have children and live in

southern Europe.

Internal geographical mobility is known to be lower in Europe than in the

United States. Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain stand out within Europe

for the low mobility of their population and, in particular, for the small an-

nual proportion of people that change their region of residence. According

to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD,

2005), inter-regional mobility rates in 2003 measuring the ratio of gross out-

ows to population were approximately 0.2 per cent in Greece and Spain and

0.5 per cent in Italy and Portugal, but were much higher in France (2.1 per

cent), Germany (1.4 per cent) and the United Kingdom (2.3 per cent). Inter-

estingly, there are almost no differences between countries when looking at

intra-regional mobility rates; in 2001, these were approximately 2.5 per cent in

Greece, Italy and Germany and around 4 per cent in Spain, the United King-

dom and France.1

This article investigates the determinants of low inter-regional mobil-

ity in southern Europe. This is a fundamental issue for southern European

* University of Murcia, email: ildefonso.mendez@um.es. The author is grateful for Samuel

Bentolila’s advice and supervision, and for the comments received from María Dolores Collado,

Juan José Dolado, Pedro Jesús Hernández, Ángel López, Ernesto Villanueva and seminar partici-

pants at the Centre for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI) and University of Murcia. This

article draws on an earlier CEMFI Working Paper by the author (see Mendez, 200 8).

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

1 Author’s calculations, using European Community Household Panel (ECHP) data.

International Labour Review582

countries, given their pronounced regional disparities (ibid.) and the fact that,

in a single currency area, other policy instruments such as exchange rate re-

alignments are not available to adjust to regional shocks.

Research on low geographical mobility has focused on institutional fac-

tors such as unemployment insurance schemes. Hassler et al. (200 5) argue that

differing levels of unemployment benets account for the difference in mobil-

ity rates between the United States and Europe; Europe has more generous

benets and lower mobility. However, Tatsiramos (2009) nds that receiving

benets is not necessarily associated with lower mobility in Europe, since bene-

ts might increase mobility by relaxing liquidity constraints in the presence of

mobility and search costs.

Type of housing is also stressed in the literature as a determining factor

in mobility. The common nding is that renters living in social housing, and

owners, are more reluctant to move for job-related reasons, as described in,

for example, Barceló (2003). Ownership rates in the United Kingdom and the

United States, however, are close to those for Greece and Italy and, together

with Sweden, are at the top of the OECD ranking when ownership and social

renting are jointly considered.

The empirical literature has also shown that family ties and local social

capital deter mobility (Spilimbergo and Ubeda, 2004; Munshi and Rosenzweig,

2009; David, Janiak and Wasmer, 2010). Alesina and Giuliano (2010) argue

that culture, as expressed by the strength of family ties, affects mobility, and

nd that strong family ties result in greater reliance on the family as an eco-

nomic unit, and lower spatial mobility, using data for over 70 countries. How-

ever, their hypothesis cannot explain the low levels of inter-regional mobility

within developed countries, since they rank Italy, Spain and the United States

together as countries with strong family ties, while Greece is ranked close to

Norway and characterized as a country with weaker family ties than France,

Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

This article analyses the effect of childcare opportunities on the geo-

graphical mobility of couples who have, or are planning to have, children. I

argue that in southern Europe, young adults living as part of a couple choose

to live close to their parents in order to reconcile work and family life, once

they have children, by taking advantage of the low labour force participation

rate of their mothers. That is likely to be their optimal residential choice since,

among developed countries, southern European countries have the highest

intergenerational gap in female labour force participation rates, the greatest

degree of “rationing” in the public provision of childcare services – i.e. the

least number of places per 100 children – and the greatest time transfers from

mothers to young adults in the form of grandparenting time.

A partial-equilibrium job search model is presented in which couples

make decisions regarding fertility, female employment and inter-regional mo-

bility, taking into account the availability of different childcare arrangements.

Family caregivers – i.e. grandmothers – do not migrate with the couple, thus

making couples that have children and access to grandparenting more reluc-