D4 Published development or research report or study
The increase in non-marital childbearing and its link to educational expansion
Authors: Christine Schnor, Marika Jalovaara
Publisher: Turku Center for Welfare Research
Publishing place: Turku
Publication year: 2017
Series title: Working Papers on Social and Economic Issues
Number in series: 1
First page : 1
Last page: 46
Web address : http://wpsei.utu.fi/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SchnorJalovaara_WPSEI_1_2017.pdf
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/28388343
The rise in non-marital childbearing has coincided with educational expansion, although
non- marital childbirths are more common among the low-educated population. This
article examines how changes in the education-specific rates of non-marital
childbearing and in the educational distribution of parents contributed to increased nonmarital
childbearing among Finnish first-time parents over the 1970–2009 period. Using
register data and a decomposition approach, we find that the increase in non-marital
first-time births was driven mainly by the large population of secondary-educated
women and men and by the growing group of lower tertiary-educated women. The
lowest-educated population continued to have the highest proportion of non-marital
first-time childbearing, but their overall contribution was small due to diminishing
group size. The highest-educated population increased its contribution to non-marital
childbearing but still has the lowest non-marital childbearing rates. We conclude that
the medium-educated population makes important contributions to family changes and
merits increased scholarly attention.
Downloadable publication This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |  |
