Low fertility among women graduates

James Franklin is Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of New South Wales and Sarah Chee Tueno is a graduate of the University of New South Wales. Australian women who are university graduates have fewer children than non-graduates. In most cases this appears to be the result of circumstantial pressures not preference. Long years of study fill the most fertile years of women students and new graduates need further time to establish their careers. The chance of medical infertility increases with age so, for some, this means that childbearing is not postponed but ruled out. Graduates who do make the transition from university to professional work find that working hours are long and that professional occupations are now both highly demanding and insecure. Women who take time off to care for young children must depend on one insecure income (their partner’s) rather than two, and their return to work is uncertain. These difficulties of time, money and insecurity are compounded by problems in finding a suitable partner. They are magnified by the enduring tendency of women to marry up. Thus it can be more difficult for women graduates to find husbands than it is for women who are non-graduates. ERRATUM: page 44, at the end of the sentance; Many of these career-orientated women are willing to spend up to $US9,600 taking courses on how to find a partner. There should be endnote 43 which reads; S.A. Hewlett, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, Miramax, New York, 2002 Also on page 44, at the end of the sentance; We have argued elsewhere that there are some prospects of raising graduate fertility through carefully targeted policies to reduce financial risk of childbearing, such as cancellation of the HECS debts of childbearers and paying a living wage to postgraduate research students. There should b e endnote 44 which reads; J. Franklin and S.C. Tueno, ‘Graduate and childless’, Quadrant, vol. 47, no. 7/8, July/Aug, 2003, 52-55; similar in N.O. Jackson, ‘The Higher Education Contribution Scheme — a HECS on the family?’ in G. Carmichael and A. Dharmalingam (Eds), Populations of New Zealand and Australia at the Millennium, special issue of Journal of Population Research, 2002, pp. 105-120 Copyright. Monash University and the author/s