Smart ladies having babies

blog by S.J. Velasquez • May 16, 2012 @ 11:07am

More highly educated women are becoming moms these days, a University at Buffalo economist’s research shows.

Since the ‘90s, more educated women in their 30s and 40s have opted to raise children—and more children, for that matter. Fertility—defined in the study as the number of children a woman has—is on the rise, and childlessness has declined by approximately 5 percent since 1998.

Previous studies showed that older educated women were less likely to take on motherhood, but UB assistant professor Qingyan Shang’s research proves that’s just not the case in this day and age.

“Women born in the late 1950s are the turning point,” Shang said.

Having previously focused on studying work habits of professional women and motherhood, Shang instead looked at education, finding that professional women often times changed professions upon becoming moms.

“We did a more comprehensive study,” Shang said. “We instead define the sample using education, which is less responsive to short-term fertility decisions.”

The paper, and co-author by Ohio State University professor Bruce A. Weinberg, is published in the Journal of Population Economics.

Photo courtesy of Flickr / Victor1558.

TAGGED: fertility, motherhood, mothers, research, ub, university at buffalo, working moms