Another child? Determinants and timing of fertility for parents of a child with a disability

Discovering that a child has a disability at birth or during the early years and caring for the child, can have emotional, financial, and organisational consequences for parents, potentially affecting family plans and behaviours. This paper examines how having a child with a disability relates to subsequent fertility among parents in France. It considers both whether and when a subsequent birth occurs by parity, and how this varies according to maternal age, income, and place of residence. We analysed a large French administrative dataset comprising almost three million yearly observations from 2011 to 2019, including 158,000 births in families with and without a child receiving the education allowance for children with disabilities. The results show that the likelihood of a second birth is nearly halved for parents of a child with a disability; however, third and subsequent birth transitions remain unchanged. Among those who have another child, the time to the next birth is up to 1.5 years longer. The interval between births is longest at the extremes of the income distribution and in large cities. Stronger effects among first-time parents suggest that prior parenting experience may atenuate the negative relationship between a child’s disability and subsequent fertility.