The Relationship between Change in Educational Attainment and Fertility Rates in Taiwan

Abstract

Using vital statistics data for 1966 on age-education-specific marital fertility rates and comparable data drawn from a sample of Taiwanese women in 1971, the author computes the separate effects of changes in marital fertility, proportions married, age distribution, and educational distribution on changes in the crude birth rate and the fertility rate between 1966 and 1971. The changing educational distribution appears to have been fairly important, accounting for 24 percent of the 1966-1971 change in crude birth rate, holding other factors constant. For young women, the closely related factors of education and age at marriage seem to dominate fertility over the period, probably reflecting the widespread adoption of contraceptive practice by the lower educational strata. The effects of organized family planning program efforts are probably felt here.