Who's having the babies: female edition
I while back I posted a piece with some data on how likely men are to have children, and how that differs amongst certain groups. Poking around a bit more there's also similar data available for women. The previous data suggested that only about 50% of highly educated, liberal men reproduced. Compare to some stats for educated women in NBC's article
Childlessness is up in the U.S.
While higher-educated women overall are more likely to be childless, that may be slowly changing. In 2008, about 24 percent of women ages 40-44 with a master's, doctoral or professional degree did not have children, a decline from 31 percent in 1994.
On the side of the Atlantic, in the UK things seem more extreme. Consider the article
Are you too clever to be a mother? Maternal urge decreases by a QUARTER for every 15 extra IQ points
When Kanazawa, who used data from the UK's National Child Development Study, added controls for economics and education, the results remained the same - the more intelligent the woman, the less likely she was to have children. ... One in five 45-year-olds is childless, while among those with degrees, the figure rises to 43 per cent, suggesting that Kanazawa's findings are sound.
If 43% of 45-year old women with university degrees in the UK is childless, I wonder how the figures compare for those with graduate degrees. Is the effect more pronounced?
You'll see an article here or there where a women gets depressed after not having had kids which leads to more interesting articles like the following one from The Daily Beast which discusses "whether the fear of future regret is a valid motivator for popping out babies"