The Association between Education attainment, Age at first marriage and Marital fertility

Abstract

When the declining of fertility had reached below the replacement level, the relationship between education attainment and marital fertility may vary by definition of dependent variable. This article analyzes the association between the level of education and the number of children ever-born of ever-married women based on The Reproductive Health Survey​ 2009, using the Poisson regression model and comparing by age group. The results showed that highly-educated women had lower marital fertility than lower education counterparts, while women with higher age at first marriage had lower marital fertility than lower age at first marriage counterparts as expected. However, these results were different when comparing the results between the current (aged 25-34) and the complete marital fertility (aged 25-34). Differences in age at first marriage by education level were not the explainable factors for the differences in marital fertility among women with different level of education.