Font Size: 

Literature usually stresses the link of non-marital childbearing to low maternal education. This study focuses on how changes in the education-specific rates of non-marital childbearing and in the educational distribution of parents contributed to the increase in non-marital childbearing among Finnish first-time parents in 1970–2009. Using register data and decomposition approach, we show that the overall increase in non-marital first births was mostly driven by the large groups of secondary educated women and men, and the growing group of lower tertiary educated women. The lowest educated continued to have highest proportions of non-marital first childbearing, but their contribution to the overall increase was small due to diminishing group size. Contribution of the highest educated increased but they still have lowest rates of non-marital childbearing. We conclude that the medium educated make an important contribution to family changes and should not be neglected in research.

non-marital childbearing; educational expansion; decomposition; Finland