Late, But Not Too Late? Postponement of First Birth Among Highly Educated US Women

Natalie Nitsche,Hannah Brückner

doi:10.1007/s10680-020-09571-z

Abstract

We examine the link between the postponement of parenthood and fertility outcomes among highly educated women in the USA born in 1920–1986, using data from the CPS June Supplement 1979–2016. We argue that the postponement–low fertility nexus noted in demographic and biomedical research is especially relevant for women who pursue postgraduate education because of the potential overlap of education completion, early career stages, and family formation. The results show that women with postgraduate education differ from women with college education in terms of the timing of the first birth, childlessness, and completed fertility. While the postponement trend, which began with the cohorts born in the 1940s, has continued among highly educated women in the USA, its associations with childlessness and completed parity have changed considerably over subsequent cohorts. We delineate five distinct postponement phases over the 80-year observation window, consistent with variation over time in the prevalence of strategies for combining tertiary education and employment with family formation.

Highlights

Increasing educational attainment is one of the key factors characterizing social change and development over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
We argue that the postponement–low fertility nexus is especially important for women who participate in tertiary education beyond the undergraduate level; in other words, for women pursuing advanced degrees
Postponement started in the cohort born in 1941–45, sharply increased in the cohort born in 1946–1950, for both women with postgraduate education and women with college education only

Summary

Introduction

Increasing educational attainment is one of the key factors characterizing social change and development over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Morgan and Rindfuss (1999) analyzed the association between age at first birth and completed fertility for a sample of US women born between 1910 and 1950, and found a robust association between age at first birth and parity at age 40–44, which is, weakening among more recent cohorts. Kohler et al (2001) attempted to estimate the causal effect of fertility with a Danish sample of MZ twins born between 1945 and 1960, and proposed a model that accounts for preferences. According to their findings, postponement affects fertility, and that effect increases with increasing postponement. Like Morgan and Rindfuss (1999), they found that the effect declines in more recent birth cohorts. Billari and Borgoni (2005) proposed another method to account for selection into postponement, and showed that the estimated effect of the postponement of the first birth on the transition to the second birth is not influenced by selection

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