The interplay of race/ethnicity and education in fertility patterns

Abstract

This study examines the interplay between race/ethnicity and educational attainment in shaping completed fertility in the United States for women born 1961–80. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth, 2006–17, we apply multilevel, multiprocess hazard models to account for unobserved heterogeneity and to estimate (1) cohort total fertility rates, (2) parity progression ratios, and (3) parity-specific fertility timing, for non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic women by educational attainment. We find that compared with their white counterparts, fertility was higher among Black and Hispanic women with less than high school education. However, among college-educated women, fertility levels were lowest among Black women and highest among Hispanic women. The difference in fertility between college-educated Black and white women is driven mainly by the smaller proportion of Black mothers having second births. We find little evidence that the observed racial/ethnic disparities in fertility levels by educational attainment are driven by differences in fertility timing.

Keywords:

• fertility racial/ethnic disparities
• educational disparities
• parity progression ratio
• fertility timing
• hazard models

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Emma Zang is based in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Biostatistics, Yale University, USA. Chloe Sariego is based in the Department of Sociology, Yale University, USA. Anirudh Krishnan is based at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, USA.

2 Please direct all correspondence to Emma Zang, Departments of Sociology and Biostatistics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511 USA; or by E-mail: [email protected]

3 Funding information: National Institute on Aging, grant number R21AG074238–01; National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, grant number 1R01MD017298-01; the Research Education Core of the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center at Yale School of Medicine, grant number P30AG021342; and the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University.