Racial fertility differences: The role of female employment and education in wanted and unwanted childbearing

This paper employs data from a merged sample of the National Surveys of Family Growth to examine how female employment status conditions the relationship between education and wanted and unwanted births among African American and white women. A rationale is presented for why a minority group status hypothesis that posits lower fertility among more highly educated African American women as compared to similar white women might find support in the case of wanted births and among certain women, including earlier birth cohorts. Our results provide some evidence far these ideas as well as evidence for a social characteristics hypothesis that predicts convergence of childbearing with rising education. However, persistently higher levels of unwanted births among African American women of ail educational levels suggest that the dynamics of racial fertility differences are more complex than either of the hypotheses imply.