Education and Fertility of Employed Women in Croatia

Abstract

This paper investigates to what extent women’s educational attainment is related to their demographic behavior, especially the age of first birth and the ultimate number of children. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the difference in the age of first birth among women with a different educational attainment exists and how significant it is. Additionally, we investigate the impact of different educational attainment of women on the fertility quantum. Multinomial logistic regression and other statistical techniques are applied to the data from the survey conducted in 2007 on the proportional quota sample of 1309 employed women in Croatia aged 20-39. The results show that there are differences in women’s fertility according to their educational attainment, and educational attainment has a significant role in determining the timing of fertility. When applying pro- -natalistic policy measures, one should bear in mind that the highest difference between the actual and desired number of children is found among highly educated women.