Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Demography, baby boom, cohort fertility, childlessness, education, Europe, United States, MALE BREADWINNER FAMILY, MASS EDUCATION, CHANGING FAMILY, EXPANSION, GRADIENT, 19TH-CENTURY, TRANSITION, MARRIAGE, DECLINE, IDEAL, Academic Success, Birth Rate, Developed Countries, Family Characteristics, Female, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Population Dynamics, Socioeconomic Factors, 1603 Demography, 4403 Demography

Abstract:

In Europe and the USA, female 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 and how these relate to women’s education in fourteen European countries and the USA. The proportion of parents with exactly two children rose steadily, and homogeneity in family sizes increased over the 1901 to the 1945 cohorts. 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 in particular among women with post-primary education, this was compensated for by decreasing childlessness and increasing parity 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’.