Demographic and Social Aspects of Childlessness: Census Data

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Abstract
The changing levels and differential patterns of childlessness are matters of much concern to students of demographic and medical problems. Rates of childlessness rose from about 8% among ever-married women who were in the midst of childbearing nearly a century ago to a peak of 20% for those in the same period of life during the depression years of the 1930''s. For women who went through the corresponding period of life during World War II and the early postwar years, the eventual level of childlessness will almost undoubtedly fall again below 10%. (An additional 5 to 8% will never marry.) Thus, the replacement of the population is being shared by a larger proportion of the women than a decade or two ago. Rates of childlessness were found to be largest among urban nonwhite women, among married women living apart from their husbands, among those women with broken marriages who subsequently remarry, and among those who delay childbearing during the first 10 years of marriage. When childlessness is studied by social and economic characteristics some of the relationships just listed tend to obscure the picture. With some reservations, however, it may be said that rates of childlessness are somewhat above average for college-educated women, women whose husbands are in the white collar occupations, women who are in the labor force, and women whose husbands are in the lower income levels. The data suggest the hypothesis that women are more likely to be childless if their husbands have less income than others in the same occupation group, though this hypothesis was not specifically tested.

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