Does the women’s employment–fertility U-shape emerge at the local level? Evidence from Italian municipalities

BACKGROUNDThe gender revolution and multiple equilibria perspectives suggest a U-shaped relationship between women's employment and fertility as societies move from a traditional male breadwinner equilibrium, through institutional and normative mismatch, towards gender egalitarianism.Whether this pattern can be detected locally in a persistently low-fertility setting remains unclear. OBJECTIVEWe ask whether the employment-fertility U-shape is visible across Italian municipalities and whether this relationship displays distinct territorial configurations across the country's main macro-areas (North, Centre, and South and Islands). METHODSWe construct a harmonized municipality-level dataset from Italian National Institute of Statistics sources for 2019-2024, projecting all observations onto the 2024 geography of 7,896 municipalities.We compute period averages of the general fertility rate and female employment at ages 25-64.We display descriptive associations for both the full sample and a restricted sample, excluding small municipalities, where fertility indicators are more exposed to statistical volatility. RESULTSIn both samples, the association is U-shaped.Net of some minor overlaps, macro-area panels suggest that municipalities in the South and Islands are more often located on the traditional low-employment/high-fertility side, those in the Centre are around the low-