The High Fertility of College Educated Women in Norway: An Artifact of the Separate Modelling of Each Parity Transition

Oystein Kravdal, University of Oslo

College education has a positive impact on birth rates, net of age and duration since previous birth, according to models estimated separately for second and third births. Whereas a high fertility among the better-educated perhaps could be explained by socioeconomic or ideational factors, it might just as well be a result of selection. When parity transitions are modelled jointly, with a common unobserved factor included, negative effects of educational level appear. The effects are less clearly negative for women born in the 1950s than for those born in the 1940s or late 1930s. The cohorts from the 1950s show educational differentials in completed fertility that are quite small and to a large extent stem from differences in childlessness. Second-birth progression ratios are just as high for the college educated as for women with only compulsory education, and the third-birth progression ratios differ very little.