Longer time spent in education means starting families later in life

摘要

The most prominent change in childbearing in developed societies in the last few decades is that women are having their first child at a later average age. This briefing paper provides a summary explanation for this widespread but poorly understood demographic trend. The change in the timing of motherhood has been due mainly to a longer time spent in education, but also to life course delays after the end of education. The age at which people complete their education is crucial to the demographic analysis of events in young adulthood. The findings highlight the key role played by structural, as distinct from cultural, factors in the timetable of fertility and family life over the past several decades in developed societies. They also identify educational participation as a potentially useful predictor in forecasting fertility. The research in this briefing paper wasundertaken by Professor Máire Ní Bhrolcháin and Dr Éva Beaujouan and summarises the article ‘Fertility postponement is largely due to rising educational enrolment’ published in Population Studies(Vol.66,no.3) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00324728.2012.697569#