Educational attainment and ultimate fertility among Swedish women born in 1955-59

Jan M. Hoem, Gerda R. Neyer and Gunnar Andersson
Additional contact information
Jan M. Hoem: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Gerda R. Neyer: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Gunnar Andersson: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2006-004, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: This is the second of two companion papers addressing the association between educational attainment and fertility for some sixty educational groups of Swedish women, defined according to field of education as well as level of education. The first paper is about childlessness and education, the present one about the mean number of children ever born. We find that ultimate fertility decreases somewhat with an increasing educational level, but its dependence on the field of education is much more impressive. In general, educational groups with relatively little childlessness also have relatively high ultimate fertility, and educational groups with much childlessness have relatively low ultimate fertility. In particular, women educated for the teaching or health-care professions have less childlessness and a higher ultimate fertility than others. Conversely, women with an education for esthetic or (non-teacher) humanist occupations have unusually high fractions childless and low ultimate fertility. Women with religious educations stand out by having very high fractions childless but quite ordinary mean ultimate fertility nevertheless; such women have very little childbearing outside of marriage. Women with research degrees have remarkably ordinary childbearing behavior; they do not forego motherhood to the extent that some theories would predict.

Keywords: Sweden; education; fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/en/publications_database ... born_in_1955_59_2214 (text/html)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2006-004.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2006-004

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2006-004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().