1 The effect of women’s participation in labour market on postponement of childbearing: a comparison between Italy and Hungary A. Busetta Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Aziendali e finanziarie Viale delle Scienze (Ed. 13) 90128, Palermo University of Palermo, ITALY annalisa.busetta@unipa.it tel. +39.339.853.7303 O. Giambalvo Dipartimento di Scienze Statistiche e Matematiche “Silvio Vianelli” Viale delle Scienze (Ed. 13) 90128, Palermo University of Palermo, ITALY ornella.giambalvo@unipa.it Abstract This paper analyses the effect of the increasing female participation in the labour market on the transition to first childbirth. In this analysis both the generational and the regional perspective are taken into account to understand, how postponement behaviour is spreading from one region to the other and from one generation to the next. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey of Italy and Hungary. It adopts a multilevel event history model to focus on the micro-level relationship between the transition to adulthood and reproductive behaviour, to understand the empirical importance of macro-level factors related to regional socio- economic and cultural differences and to indicate differences in micro-level relationships among people of different family, socio-economic, and educational backgrounds. The results of the model shows that the delayed entry into labour market has a significant negative effect on the probability of having a child. This effect remains significant also controlling for generations, regional heterogeneity and increasing of female participation. Keywords: low fertility, postponement, first job, discrete time, multilevel event history analysis models