Education and the ‘Baby Boom’ in Northern Ireland Patrick McGregor Patricia McKee NILS022: “Predicting Short Run Changes in Fertility in Northern Ireland” a project funded by The authors are grateful to the NILS teams at NISRA for their assistance Attesting to the Potential of the NILS NILSRF 11 March 2011

2 Education and the ‘baby boom’ in Northern Ireland Overview Education and fertility The NILS The data The statistical model Results Conclusion

3 Total Births Age Specific Fertility Rates Fertility in Northern Ireland

Education and fertility4 Static economic analysis Children assumed to be normal ‘goods’ and the decline in fertility with income explained by child ‘quality’: the income elasticity of quality (+ve) being greater than the income elasticity of quantity (-ve). The home production framework allows the cost of children to be expressed as a function of the parents’ wages and their respective shares in the costs of producing child quality

Education and fertility5 Dynamic economic analysis The ‘user cost’ of a child now is a function of a sequence of prices such as the female wage rate The optimal profile of a woman’s stock of human capital will be jointly determined with the timing of the births of her children. Any empirical analysis should permit the demographic profile to vary with educational attainment

The data6 Level 0:No qualifications Level 1:GCSE grade D-G; 1-4 CSEs grade 1;1-4 ‘O’ level passes; NVQ level 1 Level 2:5+ CSEs grade 1; 5+ GCSEs grade A-C;5+ ‘O’ level passes; NVQ level 2 Level 3:2+ ‘A’ levels; 4+ AS levels; NVQ level 3 or GNVQ Advanced Level 4:First degree; NVQ level 4; HNC ; HND Level 5:Higher degree; NVQ level 5 Source: 2001 Census

The data7 Women in the Labour Market Source: DETINI

The NILS8 The NILS potential mothers: those women with health card registrations, aged years and whose DOB is one of the 104 in the systematic sample Registrations downloaded biannually and constitute potential panel members Details of any birth to a NILS mother are forwarded by the GRO to the NILS 2001 Census: An attempt is made to link the Census details of all NILS mothers

The data9 Sources of Information available for the NILS Fertility Panel 101 Census 91 4,653 7,019 Census 01 GRO BSO 61,263 24,041 32, ,710

The data10 Sources of Parity in the Fertility Panel Parity from Freq. Percent Census - offspring 116, GRO births 10, census 6, Count births Census + n of births Missing 24, Total Women 157,

The data11 L01 L45 L23 Parity by Age and Education for the Fertility Panel

The Statistical Model12 The Logit Model Variables AGE to COHORT are interacted with EDUCATION to allow demographic profile to vary with educational attainment Model estimated 2001 – 2007 for women aged 24 to 44 years old PERIOD dummies take account of economic fluctuations COHORT dummies take account of tempo and quantum changes

Results13 RESULTS variableAllL01L45 Age Parity Par01 Duration Period Cohort C83t87 Locality Not included Religion Not included Education L01, PL45 Not included Constant

Results14 The Decomposition of the Change in Births 2001/2 to 2006/7 for the Cohort