Relation of marriage and education to fertility in the U.S.S.R

Abstract One-half of the variation in Soviet fertility as measured by the child-woman ratio is attributable to the proportion of married women in the 20-24 age group. The familar sociological hypothesis of an inverse relation between human fertility and education also is fully substantiated with data for the 36 major ethnic groups in the U.S.S.R. The second and third best predicting variables fall into the two extreme age groups: (a) those 16 to 19 years of age with more than seven years of school completed and (b) those men and women aged 60 and over with the equivalent formal education. Results of this study support the modified hypothesis that complements previously publicized findings. It asserts that variations in fertility attributable to the traditionally religious values can be explained in terms of the age-specific marriage and educational differentials known to have existed in the past and still characteristic of the multi-national society in the Soviet Union.