Underachieving Fertility: Education, Life Course Factors, and Cohort Change

Kelly Musick, University of Southern California
Sarah Edgington, University of California, Los Angeles

We use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Youth to examine cohort change in the relationship between fertility intentions, completed fertility, and education. While all women tend to fall short of their childbearing intentions, the gap between intended and realized fertility is greatest among the college educated. We examine what accounts for women’s inability to meet their childbearing intentions, focusing in particular on how such factors differ by women’s education, and whether these factors have changed over time. A common explanation of the education gap in fertility is the better employment opportunities of the more educated, which make time out of the labor force for children more costly. Increasingly, however, more educated women can substitute income for time in child care; their better marriage market opportunities may also mean more help from spouses. Have these changes led to increases the ability of college-educated women to meet their fertility intentions?