Seeding the gender revolution: Women’s education and cohort fertility among the baby boom generations

2018/09/02 by Jan Van Bavel, Martin Klesment, Éva Beaujouan +9 · 1 voice · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Family Dynamics and Relationships #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics #Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences

paper · doi:10.1080/00324728.2018.1498223

Abstract

In Europe and the United States, women's educational attainment started to increase around the middle of the twentieth century. The expected implication was fertility decline and postponement, whereas in fact the opposite occurred. We analyse trends in the quantum of cohort fertility among the baby boom generations in 15 countries and how these relate to women's education. Over the 1901-45 cohorts, the proportion of parents with exactly two children rose steadily and homogeneity in family sizes increased. Progression to a third child and beyond declined in all the countries, continuing the ongoing trends of the fertility transition. In countries with a baby boom, and especially among women with post-primary education, this was compensated for by decreasing childlessness and increasing progression to a second child. These changes, linked to earlier stages of the fertility transition, laid the foundations for later fertility patterns associated with the gender revolution.

Citations

• Human Capital Investments or Norms of Role Transition? How Women's Schooling and Career Affect the Process of Family Formation
• Late Nineteenth-And Early Twentieth-Century Childlessness
• World Expansion of Mass Education, 1870-1980

Cited by

• The effect of political violence on fertility in mid-twentieth-century Estonia
• Spatial Variation in the Educational Gradient of First Motherhood in Spain: Occurrence and Timing
• Needing a child to be fulfilled? The relevance of social norms around childbearing desires in collective orientations and individual meanings

Discussions

• Did you know that the share of childless women born at the beginning of 20th century in western countries was ~ as high as today? New classics paper in Population Studies by Jay van Bavel and co-aut [bsky, 31 points, 1 comments]

Related

• Educational composition and parity contribution to completed cohort fertility change in low-fertility settings
• The Contribution of Educational Changes to Fertility Declines in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries
• Gender Equity in Theories of Fertility Transition
• The Gender Revolution: A Framework for Understanding Changing Family and Demographic Behavior
• The Baby Boom and Its Causes: What We Know and What We Need to Know