Childlessness Trends in Twentieth-Century Europe: Limited Link to Growing Educational Attainment
Éva Beaujouan, Zuzanna Brzozowska, Kryštof Zeman
Abstract
Childlessness, a driving force of fertility, has undergone strong variations in 20th-centuryEurope, and educational attainment has been rising continuously. We analyse how thesetwo factors were related to each other over time. Our study is based on census and largescalesurvey data from 13 European countries, collected in the Cohort Fertility andEducation database. We compare the trends in the share of women childless at age 40+ inthe 1916â1965 birth cohorts, by level of education. The results suggest that the changes inthe educational composition of the population were only marginally related to the overallvariation in childlessness rates. With time, the positive educational gradient inchildlessness usually decreased: the differences between women of medium/high educationand low educated women diminished. However, the childlessness ratio between highly andmedium educated women remained stable in Western and Southern Europe and evenslightly increased in the East.