The increase in non-marital childbearing has coincided with educational expansion, although non-marital childbirths are more common among the low-educated population. This article quantifies the contribution of changes in education-specific rates of non-marital childbearing and educational distribution of parents to increases in non-marital childbearing among Finnish first-time parents over the period 1970–2009. Using Finnish register data on first-time mothers (N = 112,730) and fathers (N = 108,812), the study decomposes changes in the proportion of non-marital first childbearing in pairwise comparisons of successive decades for four educational segments: low educated (International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 0–2), medium educated (ISCED 3–4), lower tertiary educated (ISCED 5–6) and upper tertiary educated (ISCED 7–8). The findings show that the increase in non-marital first-time births was mainly attributable to the large population of medium-educated women and men and the growing segment of lower tertiary-educated women. The highest proportion of non-marital first-time childbearing remained among the low-educated population, but diminishing group size meant their overall contribution was small. The growing upper tertiary-educated population increased its contribution to non-marital childbearing but still exhibited the lowest non-marital childbearing rates. We conclude that the medium-educated population merits increased scholarly attention for its important contribution to population-level changes.

中文翻译：

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非婚生育的增加及其与教育扩张的联系

非婚生子的增加与教育扩张相吻合，尽管非婚生子在受教育程度低的人群中更为常见。本文量化了 1970 年至 2009 年期间芬兰非婚育特定教育率和父母教育分布的变化对芬兰首次父母非婚育增加的贡献。该研究使用芬兰首次母亲 (N = 112,730) 和父亲 (N = 108,812) 的登记数据，分解了四个教育阶段连续几十年成对比较中非婚先生育比例的变化： 受教育程度低（国际教育标准分类 (ISCED) 0–2)、中等教育 (ISCED 3–4)、高等教育 (ISCED 5–6) 和高等教育 (ISCED 7–8)。调查结果显示，非婚生子首次生育的​​增加主要是由于受过中等教育的女性和男性人口众多，以及受过高等教育的女性人数不断增加。非婚生育首次生育比例最高的仍然是受教育程度低的人群，但群体规模的缩小意味着他们的总体贡献很小。不断增长的高学历人口增加了对非婚生育的贡献，但仍表现出最低的非婚生育率。我们得出的结论是，受过中等教育的人口因其对人口水平变化的重要贡献而值得更多的学术关注。