An increasing share of highly educated women in the US are having children and bigger families, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

Share on Pinterest The study reports that childlessness among highly educated women is down 30% from 1994.

Childlessness among women into their 40s with an MD or PhD has fallen significantly over the last two decades.

Presently, around 22% of women aged 40-44 with a master’s degree (or higher) are childless – down 30% from 1994. In those women with an MD or PhD the decline is even more dramatic falling from 35% of women without children in 1994 to 20% today.

In addition to being more likely that highly educated women will have children, the research finds that they are also having bigger families.

Six in 10 women with a master’s degree have had two or more children – up from 51% in 1994. The share with two children has risen 4 percentage points, while the share with three or more has risen 6 percentage points.

Gretchen Livingston, Senior Researcher of the report “Childlessness falls, family size grows among highly educated women” writes:

“This trend has likely been driven by demographic and societal changes. It coincides with women’s growing presence in managerial and leadership positions and suggests that an increasing share of professional women are confronting the inevitable push and pull of work-family balance.”

Previous research by the Pew Research Center has indicated that overall women devote fewer hours to paid work with each additional child they have. The report found that on average, a working-age woman with no children spends 27 hours per week in paid work, while a woman with three or more children spends 18 hours working.

Moreover, working mothers are suggested to be more than three times as likely as working fathers to reveal that being a working parent has made advancing their career more difficult.

Childlessness among all women ages 40-44 in the US is at its lowest point in a decade, which is likely fueled in part by the increase in motherhood among highly educated women. The average number of children that US women have in their lifetime has remained stable over the past 20 years, at about two children.

Currently around 35% of all women between 40-44 have two children, while just 12% have four or more. Simultaneously, one-child families have gained ground, with 18% of women having an only child at the end of their childbearing years, up from 10% in 1976. About 20% of women have three children, a number that has remained virtually unchanged.