ABSTRACT
Between 1970 and 1983, the first birth rate in the United States declined by 19 percent. In addition, according to survey data collected by the Census Bureau, the proportion of childless women increased substantially between 1976 and 1985 in the age groups 25-29, 30-34, and 35-39 (see Table 4.1). An extensive body of previous research has established that these trends reflect both (1) an increased tendency to permanently forego childbearing and (2) an increasing tendency to delay the initiation of childbearing, among those women who do ultimately bear children (see Bloom, 1982, 1984, 1987; Bloom and Pebley, 1982; Bloom and Trussell, 1984; O’Connell, 1985; Rindfuss et al., 1988). In addition, after many years of remarkable stability, the female/male wage ratio also began to increase in the 1980s (from 0.59 in 1980 to 0.67 in 1987). There is some evidence that this latter change is associated with increasing human capital accumulation on the part of women (see Smith and Ward, 1984; O’Neill, 1985). This chapter develops some explicit theoretical linkages concerning the relation-
ship betweenwomen’s fertility-timingbehavior and their humancapital acquisition and wage profiles. By simplifying the nature of the fertility/work decision, we are able to describe the conditions under which women who prefer (and therefore expect) to be delayed childbearers will invest more heavily in their human capital than women who prefer to have an early first birth. The model suggests that these conditions are fairly general: if the discount rate is greater than the economy-wide
Table 4.1 Percentage of childless women, 1976-85 (by age)
Age group 1976 1980 1982 1984 1985
18-24 69.0 70.0 72.2 71.4 71.4 25-29 30.8 36.8 38.8 39.9 41.5 30-34 15.6 19.8 22.5 23.5 26.2 35-39 10.5 12.1 14.4 15.4 16.7 40 – 44 10.2 10.1 11.0 11.1 11.4
growth rate of wages for workers who are not human capital investors, then delayers will be more likely to invest in human capital. Our empirical analysis provides some support for this theoretical model. There exists a strong positive relationship between several proxies for human capital investment and the age at which women bear their first child. However, the empirical analysis does not support the proposition that the usual proxies for human capital represent more intensive investment by women who choose to delay their childbearing.
