Iran’s total fertility fell sharply from 7 children per woman in the mid-1980s to replacement level in less than two decades. The fertility decline was ubiquitous across all age and social groups and all geographic settings, but it was the better educated women who first experienced a shift to a low fertility level. We investigate fertility trends by education from a cohort perspective to gain a deeper understanding of the role of education expansion for fertility decline. Using data from the latest three consequence censuses, we found that fertility fell rapidly among women born in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s. The fall in fertility was mostly driven by reductions in the progression ratios to the third and subsequent births in the first stage, and later by an increase of childlessness and a strengthening orientation towards a two-child family pattern. Despite the observed fertility decline among all education groups, education differences remained strong across all the analyzed cohorts. Women with upper secondary and tertiary education show a shift towards a small family size, a clear dominance of a two-child family pattern, but also a rise in the share with only one child and a rapid increase in childlessness due to non-marriage. Increasing level of education has strongly contributed to the observed fertility decline, although among the women born in the late 1950-60s and in the 1970s the effect of falling fertility at all education categories clearly dominated over the structural effect of education expansion. As more women have continued reaching tertiary education in the last two decades, the adoption of small family size and the rise of non-marriage childlessness are likely to accelerate among the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s birth cohorts. 

Meimanat Hosseini-Chavoshi is a CEPAR Research Fellow at the Demography and Ageing Unit of the School of Population and Global Health, the University of Melbourne. She is currently visiting the ANU School of Demography, working on fertility and forecasting births exploring the trends and patterns of fertility and the role of migration and education on the future of ageing and number of births. Gendered later life disability/health condition and its association with social issues such as living arrangements and daily activities is another area of her working research plan.  Prior to this, she worked at the ANU's Crawford School of Public Policy and ADSRI where she carried out her postdoctoral researches on fertility regulation, abortion, and ageing. Meimanat has a longstanding working experience on design and implementation of national surveys collaborated with the University of Tehran, Iran Ministry of Health, and some UN agencies and research networks as WHO, UNFPA, GDN and GERPA publishing the results of her work and collaborations with international demographers and researchers on family formation, reproductive health, fertility and ageing.

This semester, we invite all of our guests to bring their lunch and join us for a casual social gathering before the seminar. Unless otherwise advertised, lunch will be held in the seminar room from 12.30pm with the seminar commencing at 1.00pm.

Join Zoom meeting: https://anu.zoom.us/j/89587321433?pwd=MzhpUU1MRnRaNHovL0RTejJMeWpHUT09
Meeting ID: 895 8732 1433 Password: 306745
Join by Skype: https://anu.zoom.us/skype/89587321433