Staying in education is not the main reason women delay having children, according to study

According to the findings of new research, published in the journal Demography, the role of education is much smaller in delaying motherhood than previously believed.

Researchers from the University of Oxford in the UK and the Universities of Groningen and Wageningen in the Netherlands found that in the UK, a woman’s family background was the major factor rather than education.

The researchers investigated the extent to which education is causally related to later age at first birth in a large sample of female twins from the UK.

According to their findings, one year of additional schooling is associated with about one-half year later age at first birth.

Biometric analyses reveal that it is mainly influences of the family environment -not genetic factors- that cause spurious associations between education and age at first birth.

At the same time, using data from the Office for National Statistics they demonstrated that only 1.9 months of the 2.74 years of fertility postponement for birth cohorts 1944–1967 could be attributed to educational expansion based on these estimates.

They concluded that the rise in educational attainment alone cannot explain differences in fertility timing between cohorts.

Read more: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-016-0531-5

Image credit: http://www.parenting.com/article/pregnancy-at-20-30-40

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