Low fertility among women graduates.

Australian women who are university graduates have fewer children than non-graduates. In most cases this appears to be the result of circumstantial pressures not preference. Long years of study fill the most fertile years of women students and new graduates need further time to establish their careers. The chance of medical infertility increases with age so, for some, this means that childbearing is not postponed but ruled out. Graduates who do make the transition from university to professional work find that working hours are long and that professional occupations are now both highly demanding and insecure. Women who take time off to care for young children must depend on one insecure income (their partner's) rather than two, and their return to work is uncertain. These difficulties of time, money and insecurity are compounded by problems in finding a suitable partner. They are magnified by the enduring tendency of women to marry up. Thus it can be more difficult for women graduates to find husbands than it is for women who are non-graduates.

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There has been little direct attention paid in Australia to the phenomenon of low fertility among women graduates. Yet it was already observed a hundred years ago, when almost half of the first generations of female university graduates remained unmarried and the rest had below-average fertility. (1) There has been brief notice a number of times since, (2) but no extended study of its extent or causes. The question is significant because of the increasing education levels of women. A majority of recent graduates are women and, of 35 year-old women, about one in six have a bachelors degree and of these about one in four have a higher degree. (3)

The number of children ever born for 40 year old women in Australia varies dramatically with education level (Figure 1). At the 1996 census those with no post-school qualification had an average of 2.3 children, those with a bachelors degree 1.8, and those with a higher degree 1.3, that is, half a child less per degree. (4)

Rates of childlessness tell the same story. Women with no post school qualifications have the lowest level of childlessness of 11 per cent, women with a bachelor degree 22 per cent, those with a higher degree 34 per cent. And of those women who do have children, the proportions going on to have two or more children drop as education rises.

These figures are reflected in regional differences: regions in Australia with higher levels of educational qualifications and higher levels of skilled occupations have lower fertility. (5)

The reasons for these large differences are the subject of this article.