educational gradients in fertility across the developed countries Tom - PDF document

Reversals, diminishing differentials, or stable pattern? Long - term trends in educational gradients in fertility across the developed countries Tomáš Sobotka, Éva Be aujouan, and Zuzanna Brzozowska Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU), Vienna Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Vienna. Version 1 October 2017 Work in progress, please do not cite Intr trod oducti tion on Education is a key marker of social status and economic potential, but also of values and preferences, including those pertaining to partnership and family life. In the course of the 20th century, higher education was almost universally linked to lower and later fertility among women (Skirbekk 2008). Having a small family was a typical way in which better educated people accumulated resources and enhanced social status and educational chances of their offspring (e.g. Goodman et al. 2012). Furthermore, highly educated women in the past remained frequently unmarried and childless; in fact non-marriage was often the most important factor behind of the observed negative relationship between women’s education and fertility (e.g. Reher and Requena 2014, Van Bavel 2014). In the last two decades, a growing number of studies have suggested that the negative education- fertility gradient among women in low-fertility countries may eventually diminish or even reverse. Factors that could bring about this change include the rapid expansion of high education, changing mating patterns, expanding public childcare, wider and more flexible employment opportunities for women, and more egalitarian gender relations (e.g. Kravdal and Rindfuss 2008, Esping‐Andersen a nd Billari 2015). Indeed, in some countries the negative education gradient in completed fertility among women has been diminishing (e.g. Wood et al. 2014); in the Nordic countries and Belgium the educational differences in fertility not only have been diminishing, but they have been also small (e.g. Andersson et al. 2009, Kravdal 1994, Neels and De Wachter 2010). However, a comprehensive cross- country analysis of long-term trends in fertility educational gradient is still lacking as most of the existing evidence comes from studies on single countries, notably the Nordic countries which in many respects differ substantially from other societies. Moreover, the debate is often clouded/distorted/biased by the reverse ecological fallacy : conclusions on aggregate-level trends are drawn from results of micro-level studies (based on individual-level regression models).

Aim ims The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic review of long-term trends in women’s education- specific fertility across the developed world. When examining whether fertility gradients tend to diminish or to persist when family size declines to low levels, we pay particular attention to how the trends among the lower educated and the highly educated women compare to their peers with medium education. To gain better understanding of the possible role of wider institutional context, we conduct our analyses not only by country, but also by broad regions (see Data section for details). We look particularly closely at the differences between the East and the West of Europe that formed two competing political blocs between the late 1940s and 1989. Further, by inspecting the educational differences in childlessness, we assess their role in explaining the observed fertility gradients and their changes over time. We expect that in countries with higher childlessness rates the educational gradients in fertility are likely to be fuelled by childlessness among better educated women. Consequently, the educational gradient among mothers should be smaller and diminishing across cohorts. Our findings about the changes in fertility gradients give important clues about the likely future trends in fertility as the share of women with university degree continues to expand. Wide and persistent gaps in fertility between women with high and medium education level would give a strong signal about the potential for further fertility declines. This is particularly important in the view of concerns many governments in Europe and East Asia express about low fertility. Data a We have collected comparative data on fertility, childlessness and parity distribution by education of women born between 1916 and 1970 and aged between 40 and 76 at the time of the data collection. They were in their prime childbearing years between 1930 and 2005 and had experienced a continuous expansion of education. Our analyses include 27 low-fertility countries in Europe, North America, Australia and East Asia, which are grouped in the following broad regions:  English-speaking countries: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States;  Northern Europe: Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden;  Western Europe: Belgium and France;  German-speaking countries: Austria, the territory of former West Germany (former FRG) and Switzerland;  Southern Europe: Greece, Italy and Spain;  Central Europe: Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia;  Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Romania, Russia and Serbia; 2

 East and south-eastern Asia: Singapore and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) To assure cross-country comparability, three broad educational categories are used: primary and below, secondary education and university education. The data come mostly from population censuses, but also from population registers and large-scale surveys. They were collected in different periods between 1970 and 2013 and originally covered different cohort groups (both 1-year and 5-year cohorts) and education categories. They were collected within the EURREP project (www.eurrep.org), and are mostly part of the Cohort Fertility and Education database (CFE database, www.cfe-database.org; see Zeman et al. 2014). More details about the data, cohorts and education categories used are provided in Appendix 1. Se Selected ted results ts When comparing the completed fertility rate (CFR) by level of education, a clear regional distinction shows up (Figure 1). In cohorts born in the early 1930s the CFR was above 2.5 children per women in only a few countries. This was the case in all education groups in the English-speaking countries, and in Singapore and South Korea. The change in the overall CFR for all women was partly influenced by compositional changes of the population. While the CFR was dropping in many countries, the CFR by level of education remained relatively stable in some countries or even increased in several countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In many countries, however, the fall in CFR was largely driven by the strong decline in CFR among the low educated women, partly converging towards the CFR of the highly educated women. This pattern is clearly visible for the two Asian countries studies, Singapore and South Korea. The key finding is that there is no uniform trend in education gradient in fertility between countries. In most countries this gradient persisted across the cohorts studied. In Denmark and New Zealand it was narrow across the cohorts analysed, while it almost disappeared among the younger cohorts in Belgium and Finland. At the other end of the spectrum countries including the United States, Austria, Poland, Slovakia or Romania displayed wide educational differentials even among the younger cohorts born in the 1960s. 3

Figure 1 Cohort fertility rate by country and level of education, by broader regions Figure 2 shows the relative changes in education gradient across regions and countries. Overall, the fertility differences between high- and medium-educated women are considerably narrower than the differences between low- and medium-educated. In countries with wide fertility differentials it is the low-educated women who stand out as a distinct group with elevated fertility. In countries where this relative gap was largest, including Singapore, South Korea, and many countries of Central and 4

Eastern Europe, it was narrowing among women born between 1920s and 1950s, often stabilising or growing among the youngest cohorts (with the main exception of South Korea, where a full convergence took place). In contrast, the smaller gap between high- and medium-educated women proved remarkably persistent and stable in most countries and broader regions, with the main exception of Nordic countries where it disappeared and Belgium, where a cross-over took place. Figure 2 Relative difference in CFR for low versus medium educated and for high versus medium educated. Countries grouped by broader regions Interpretation of Figure 2: Values around 0 mean that the CFR among the low- or high-educated women was similar (0 means identical CFR levels) to the CFR among the medium-educated. Values above and below 0 denote higher and lower levels, respectively, of fertility among the low- and high-educated than among the medium-educated, e.g. 0.2 and -0.2 signify CFR 20% higher and lower, respectively, than among the medium- educated. Preli limin inar ary y conclu lusion ons Our analysis reveals a great variety in educational gradients of fertility. There does not seem to exist a general tendency for fertility gradients to diminish when family size declines to low levels. The gap between low-educated women and all the others largely diminished with time, but in some countries 5