# **2.4. Time, Family Formation, and Care Responsibilities**

Family formation and labor market entry are among the most critical, and most gendered, transitions for young people. Marriage and childbearing are intertwined with labor market participation and human capital investments for youth, and there are two reasons why men and women in Africa experience different long-term effects. First, women tend to form families earlier than men.<sup>11</sup> Early marriage (defined as under 18) and teenage pregnancy are still commonplace in much of Sub-Saharan Africa, where the median age at first birth falls below 20 in 20 out of 35 countries with available data.<sup>12</sup> By age 25, close to 80 percent of African women have given birth (Filmer and Fox, 2014). Thus, marriage and childbearing decisions and labor market entry decisions are often made simultaneously for young women.

Second, prevailing social norms place the primary responsibility for domestic work and child care on women, and the primary responsibility of providing monetarily for the family on men. In the ILO SWTS (see footnote 3), among inactive youth, 16.5 percent of women and 7 percent of men in Malawi cite domestic responsibilities as the reason for inactivity in the workforce; similarly, rates are 17.4 percent of women and 2.2 percent of men in Uganda (Elder and Kring, 2016). These differences in social norms lead men and women to view family formation and job acquisition differently. <mark>The responsibility of being the primary family caretaker may reduce demand for female employees, as they are more “expensive” in the eyes of employers. For example, caretaking involves a risk of absence if a child is sick, time off from work in cases of pregnancy, and limited hours available for work or overtime.</mark> A lack of labor market opportunities may reinforce the preference of some young women and their families to pursue marriage, rather than employment, as a means to secure an economic future. Early ages of marriage and first birth also mean that during the critical period of labor market entry, women are more constrained by the time they have available for paid work and what kinds of work they can pursue, which may affect their longterm career trajectory.

International evidence points to the close relationship between childbearing and labor force participation of women. Panel data from 97 countries indicates that a birth is associated with a two-year reduction in a woman’s labor supply (Bloom et al., 2009). Limited labor market opportunities may reduce the opportunity cost of marriage and childbearing, altering family formation decisions. There is significant causal evidence suggesting that family formation constrains labor decisions for women. Research from the US suggests that access to birth control altered women’s career plans and their age at first marriage (Goldin, 2002). In Latin America, access to contraception resulted in delayed childbearing, which, in turn, led to some increases in how much education they attained, as well as their employment rate (Miller, 2010). These studies show that women’s careers were constrained by their options for reproductive control, though there is little evidence as to whether this relationship holds for Africa. Canning et al. (2015) point out that Africa is unique in having both high fertility and high female labor market participation, perhaps because the informal nature of women’s employment in Africa does not preclude engaging in work and child care simultaneously. Additionally, the cost of children many impose an

> 11 Cohort trends in fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa can be found in Sneeringer (2009).

> 12 Source: Most recent DHS survey between 2004 and 2014 for each country. The median age at first birth is reported for women ages 25 to 29 at the time of the survey.

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