Education and fertility through the lenses of four censuses: Czech Republic 1980, 1991, 2001, and 2011

Kryštof Zeman, Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU), Vienna Institute of Demography/Austrian Academy of Science

Besides age and gender as two fundamental demographic dimensions, educational attainment has been argued to be the most important socio-economic characteristic. However, the level of fertility by education is often not available from vital statistics using direct demographic methods. Therefore in this paper we make an effort to extract maximum information from the census data. Czech Republic has a tradition of well performed censuses providing highly detailed results. The question on the number of children the woman ever had was introduced already in 1930, and since 1980 the responses to this question can be combined with the characteristic of highest attained education. For four consecutive censuses 1980, 1991, 2001, and 2011 we thus have available detailed data on cohort, education, and number of children for women giving births across the whole twentieth century. We first use standard methodology of completed cohort fertility to study changes in level of fertility, and their decomposition due to changes in structure by education vs. levels of fertility by education. We further proceed with the task to derive an information on the timing of cohort fertility, estimating “intercensal” fertility rates and indicators. With the help of derived indicators we analyse especially the consequences of educational boom after the World War II, and the changing relation between education and fertility after the fall of communism in 1989. Last but not least, we hereby introduce data that will be part of the newly established online EURREP Database on Completed Fertility by Education at web page [videurrep.oeaw.ac.at]