Increasingly heterogeneous ages at first birth by education in Southern European and Anglo-American family-policy regimes: A seven-country comparison by birth cohort.
According to the 'reproductive polarization' hypothesis, family-policy regimes unfavourable to the combination of employment with motherhood generate greater socio-economic differentials in fertility than other regimes. This hypothesis has been tested mainly for 'liberal' Anglo-American regimes. To investigate the effects elsewhere, we compared education differentials in age at first birth among native-born women of 1950s and 1960s birth cohorts in seven countries representing three regime types. Women with low educational attainment have continued to have first births early, not only in Britain and the USA but also in Greece, Italy, and Spain. Women at all other levels of education have experienced a shift towards later first births, a shift that has been largest in Southern Europe. Unlike the educationally heterogeneous changes in age pattern at first birth seen under the Southern European and Anglo-American family-policy regimes, the changes across birth cohorts in the study's two 'universalistic' countries, Norway and France, have been educationally homogeneous.
RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138, USA. mrendall@rand.org
Michael
M
Rendall
Encarnacion
E
Aracil
Christos
C
Bagavos
Christine
C
Couet
Alessandra
A
Derose
Paola
P
Digiulio
Trude
T
Lappegard
Isabelle
I
Robert-Bobée
Marit
M
Rønsen
Steve
S
Smallwood
Georgia
G
Verropoulou
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003625:Data Collection; D003710:Demography; D004522:Educational Status; D005060:Europe; D005190:Family; D016656:Family Planning Policy; D005195:Family Relations; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011247:Pregnancy; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult