Cohort Reconstruction: The Relationship between Fertility and Education and Its Impact in the Transition to Motherhood

Lídia P. Tomé, Universidade de Évora
Maria Mendes, Universidade de Évora

The relationship between educational attainment, and the transition to motherhood has been an important topic of discussion in the demographic context. Influenced by the social and economic contexts and transformations, the educational level and the motherhood timing play a central role in shaping the life courses trajectory. E.g. in countries, such as Italy, Portugal or Spain, the extensive access to educations since the 1960’s and the explosion of higher educated female seems to result in the significant postponement and decline of fertility and remarkable differences among cohorts. If is expected to observe different behaviours between different cohorts, the goals of the current research are, (1) reconstruct life courses events for five European selected countries (Austria, Greece, Hungary, Portugal and Spain) using for IPUMS samples; (2) elaborate cohort life fertility tables to analyse the transition to motherhood; and (3) observe the impact of educational levels in the cohort fertility patterns.