Abstract: Using a hazards framework and panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979-2002), we analyze the fertility patterns of a recent cohort of U.S. white and African American women. We examine how completed fertility varies by women’s education, differentiating between intended and unintended births. We find that the education gradient on fertility comes largely from unintended childbearing, and it is not explained by childbearing desires or opportunity cost. Less educated women want no more children than the more educated, so this factor explains none of their higher completed fertility. Less educated women have lower wages, but wages have little of the negative effect on fertility predicted by economic theories of opportunity cost. Our work highlights the importance of examining other mechanisms leading less educated women to have more unintended births. Source: California Center for Population Research. On-Line Working Paper Series. Paper CCPR-016-07.
Note: one of the authors, Paula England, was a CASBS fellow in the class of 2006.
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