Extensive literature has documented the contribution of rising women’s education to decreases in completed cohort fertility (CCF). A key question related to the education–fertility relationship is to what extent the decrease in fertility is the result of changes in educational composition vs changes in fertility behaviours within educational categories. This study quantified the effect of educational expansion on fertility levels by decomposing the overall change in CCF into educational composition and education-specific fertility, and explored the changes in parity-specific components of CCF by education for cohorts born between 1940 and 1970. The results show that, despite the decline in CCF being caused mostly by changes in fertility behaviours, educational composition had a considerable impact for some cohorts. The decline in third and higher-order births played a central role in the fall in CCF across educational groups, while the effects of transitions to first and second births varied substantially.

大量文献记录了女性受教育程度提高对完成队列生育率 (CCF) 下降的贡献。与教育-生育率关系相关的一个关键问题是生育率的下降在多大程度上是教育构成变化与教育类别内生育行为变化的结果。本研究通过将 CCF 的整体变化分解为教育构成和特定教育生育率，量化了教育扩张对生育水平的影响，并探讨了 1940 年至 1970 年出生的队列受教育影响的 CCF 特定胎次成分的变化。结果表明，尽管 CCF 的下降主要是由生育行为的变化引起的，但教育构成对某些群体产生了相当大的影响。