How Big Are Educational and Racial Fertility Differentials in the U.S.?

S. Philip Morgan, Duke University
Yang Yang, Duke University

Using data from CPS surveys, we show that shifts in fertility timing have occurred disproportionately for the more educated and for whites (compared to the less educated and to African Americans). Such timing shifts imply that the underlying period quantum of fertility is considerably higher for college-educated women and for whites than suggested by the standard total fertility rate. Applying the Bongaarts-Feeney model (1998) with corrections suggested by Zeng and Land (2001), we decompose observed racial and educational differences in age-order-specific fertility rates and TFR into tempo and quantum components. We find that all of the racial difference in period fertility and roughly half of the differences by education can be attributed to differential changes in tempo. We discuss the likelihood that racial and educational quantum differences in completed fertility are on the wane and speculate that the dramatic differences in fertility timing will remain.