This is a great illustration of Simpson's Paradox. In 1994, 17.5% of women aged 40-44 were childless; in 2014, 15%. But in all but one education bracket, childlessness declined by a large amount. The explanation? More people were in the more highly educated brackets in 2014!
"If childlessness declined, how did fertility fall?" Smaller families. Source: pewresearch.org/social-trends/…
@cremieuxrecueil There's a name for this effect but I'm blanking on it
@cremieuxrecueil Random comment: I wld genuinely like to understand the limits of human intuition. Groking. When I first heard of Simpson’s Paradox it was completely non-intuitive. But now I have a moderately good intuition about it - eg when/what to check.
@cremieuxrecueil I've read that many women realize late they want to have kids, sometimes at an age when it's more difficult to become pregnant. Maybe in the recent years medice has allowed to become pregnant easier at higher ages?
@cremieuxrecueil The big concern is the explosion of childlessness on the under 40 category. There's time to remedy that but also risk of becoming south Korea real quick.
@cremieuxrecueil You could argue there's a compositional change as well. For example the most highly educated women in 1994 would be highly selected for women for whom having children was less of a priority. Rising educational levels mean you get more women who want to have children.