FERTILITY INTENTIONS OF UNIVERSITY GRADUATES

Abstract

Increasing numbers of young people enter university-level programmes and the share of university graduates among today’s young adults is expected to be around 40 per cent in OECD countries. Education-specific studies reveal differences in fertility behaviour. Childlessness is a particularly widespread phenomenon among female university graduates in Western Germany and Austria, and highly educated women are less likely to hhave larger families with three or more children. Based on the Generations and Gender Survey (GSS), we study fertility intentions of university graduates. We concentrate on university degree holders aged 27 to 40 years in Western Germany and Austria, and compare them with their peers in France and Norway. We aim to find out how different life domains are associate with the intention to have a child within the next three years. We identify determinants of fertility intentions based on the concept of the life course and inspired by the concept of the rush hour of life. We examine associations between employment and relationship on the one hand, and plans to start a family on the other. We analyse the extent to which the current individual situation in the life domains of work and partnership and their durations are related to short-term fertility intentions, taking into consideration possible gender-specific and country-specific differences. The study reveals that in Western Germany and Austria childless highly educated women are less likely to intend to have a child within the next three years. Moreover, gender differences are notable in these two countries, with women less often intending to have a child in the near future than men. Childbearingplans are most prominent among university graduates around the age of thirty. The degree of institutionalisation, the duration of the relationship and the number of working hours are also associated with fertility intentions.