ABSTRACT
An often controversial feature of human societies is that not all groups reproduce at the same rate. Differences in fertility rates across social strata arouse concern because they portend changes in patterns of dominance, inequality, or average well-being. For example, a recent, widely publicized book on inequality in the United States expresses apprehension about the presumed "dysgenic" effects of the relatively high rates of fertility among persons with low education and intelligence (Hermstein and Murray 1994). That fertility rates for low-ability and low-education women are relatively high, the authors argue, is likely to diminish the country's average intellectual ability and to polarize a small "cognitive elite" and a growing number of persons who have limited intellectual and economic capacity. Ironically, others have looked at the same demographic phenomena and drawn diametrically opposite conclusions. For example, in his classic statement about the connections between demography and social stratification, Sibley (1942) warned of the dire effects of reduced immigration and lowered fertility differentials. A large, steady influx of persons with low socioeconomic origins, he believed, is essential to maintain high rates of upward social mobility and to offset the class conflict that occurs in a demographically static society. In this chapter I appraise some of these concerns by examining the effects of variation in demographic rates on trends in the distribution of formal schooling. More specifically, I examine the combined effects of differential fertility, differential mortality, and intergenerational educational mobility on the distribution of educational attainment in the United States for women during the past half century.
