Blossfeld Human Capital Investments or Norms

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Human Capital Investments or Norms of Role Transition? How Women's Schooling and CareerAffect the Process of Family FormationAuthor(s): Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Johannes HuininkSource: The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Jul., 1991), pp. 143-168Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781641.Accessed: 12/01/2011 18:29

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Human Capital Investments or Norms ofRole Transition? How Women's Schoolingand Career Affect the Process of FamilyFormation1Hans-Peter BlossfeldEuropean University InstituteJohannes HuininkMax Planck Institute for Human Development and Education

Proponents of the new home economics hypothesize thatwomen's growing economic independence largely accounts for therise in delayed marriage and motherhood in industrialized societies.This article assesses this hypothesis for the Federal Republic ofGermany by estimating the dynamic effects of women's educationaland career investments on the timing of family events. Event-history analysis shows that the delaying effect on the timing of thefirst marriage across cohorts does not result from an increase in thequality of women's human capital investments as posited by thenew home economics. Rather, women's extended participation inschooling delays their transition to adulthood, an effect aligned withnormative expectations that young women in school are notready for marriage and motherhood. Increasing career resources,however, do lead women to postpone or avoid having children.

INTRODUCTIONRecent labor-market studies in the Federal Republic of Germany showthat women, more than men, profited from the educational expansion,the developing tertiary sector of the economy, and the expansion of thewelfare state. Across cohorts, women have a bigger increase than menat all higher levels of educational attainment (Blossfeld 1985,1989,1990),' This researchwas supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, he MaxPlanck Institutefor Human Development and Education, and the NetherlandsInsti-tute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS). We wouldlike to thank Karl Ulrich Mayer, Gigi Santow, Aage B. S0rensen, AnnemetteS0rensen,Seymour Spilerman, and anonymous reviewers for helpful comments onearlier drafts.K 1991by The University of Chicago. All rightsreserved.0002-960219219701-0006$0.50

AJS Volume 97 Number 1 (July 1991): 143-68 143


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American Journal of Sociologyand their shift from relatively unskilled production and service jobs toskilled service and administration occupations is more pronounced thanthat of men (Blossfeld 1987c). Today, young women not only stay longerin the educational system than did women of older generations (Blossfeldand Nuthmann 1989) but are able more than ever to turn higher educa-tion into better job and career opportunities (Blossfeld 1987c, 1989). Thisdevelopment is shown in figure 1, which displays the development of theaverage prestige scores of women of the birth cohorts 1929-31, 1939-41,and 1945-51 over time. For each successive birth cohort of women, theaverage prestige score starts at a higher level and has a greater slope.The changing educational and career behavior of young women, andits consequences for women's traditional roles as housewives and moth-ers, is increasingly discussed in demography and the sociology of thefamily. One hypothesis, proposed mainly by economists, is that women'sgrowing economic independence (as a result of better education and im-proved career opportunities) is one of the major factors in the rise indelayed marriage, increasing marital instability, and the decline in fertil-ity (see, e.g., Becker 1973, 1981; Schultz 1973; Zimmermann 1985).Support for this hypothesis has been claimed on the basis of severalempirical analyses. A general account of these studies is given by Lehrerand Nerlove (1986) as well as by Zimmermann (1985). But there are alsocontradictory findings, for example, by Schwarz-Miller (1981), who doesnot find that the level of education has a negative influence on the numberof children, and by Zimmermann (1985), who claims that the negativeeffect of gainful employment on fertility could be considered disprovedfor the Federal Republic of Germany. However, all these studies arebased on cross-sectional or aggregated time-series data and therefore canprovide neither sufficient nor necessary evidence for a relationship overtime at the level of the individual (Keyfitz 1977; Tuma and Hannan 1984;Bracher 1988; Blossfeld, Hamerle, and Mayer 1989). What is needed toassess the hypothesis of the new home economics is detailed time-related data on life courses of individuals. These data allow the use ofstatistical concepts that relate women's subsequent family decisions totheir previous educational and career experiences.First attempts to approach the relationship between education, labor-force participation, and family decisions using life-course data have beenmade by Rindfuss and St. John (1983), Rindfuss, Morgan, and Swicegood(1988), Bloom and Trussell (1984), Marini (1985), Diekmann (1987), Hotzand Miller (1988), Huinink (1987, 1988c), Papastefanou (1990), Bracher(1988), Bagozzi and van Loo (1988), Sprague (1988), and Santow (1989).But these authors have not been interested in analyzing how changingeducational and career investments-as a lifetime process-influencefamily formation. Our purpose in this article is therefore to model educa-144


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Schooling, Career, and Family FormationAveragePrestige - . .Score

1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985year

cohort1929-31 - - - cohort 1939-41 .......... cohort 1949-51FIG. 1.-Average occupational prestige, by time, of women born 1929-31,

1939-41, and 1949-51.

tional and career investments of women as a continuously changing pro-cess over the life course and to estimate their effects on the rate of entryinto first marriage and first motherhood, with other important influencescontrolled for.ARGUMENTS N SUPPORTOF THE HYPOTHESISOFA DECREASINGSIGNIFICANCEOF MARRIAGEAND CHILDRENFORWOMENEspecially in the older birth cohorts, women's comparatively poor gen-eral and vocational education and their overrepresentation in the lowerranks of the occupational pyramid are closely connected with an orienta-tion toward the traditional sex-specific roles that emphasize women'sresponsibilities as housewives and mothers (see Handl 1988). In the past,sociologists have argued that this traditional sex-role differentiation isfunctional for the stability of the family and even for society itself. Themost prominent exponent of this research was Talcott Parsons (1959),who argued that different roles for men and women provide an importantmechanism for preventing disruptive competition between spouses. Inmodern societies men have therefore specialized in gainful employment,and women in work within the family and the home.The importance of sex-specific roles has been also stressed in the eco-nomic approach to the family. Gary Becker (1973, 1981), its main propo-nent, views unmarried men and women as trading partners who decide

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American Journal of Sociologyto marryif each partner has more to gain by marrying than by remainingsingle. As in all trading relationships, the gains from marriage are basedon the fact that each partner has something different to offer. In mostsocieties women traditionally rely on men for provision of food and shel-ter as well as protection; and men rely on women for the bearing andrearing of children as well as for the maintenance of the home. Thismeans that the socialization process traditionally induces (1) a compara-tive advantage of women over men in the household because womeninvest mainly in the human capital that raises household efficiency, and(2) a comparative advantage of men over women in the labor marketbecause men invest mainly in capital that raises market efficiency. Hence,according to the new home economics, it is this sex-specific specializa-tion of labor in our society and the mutual dependence it produces be-tween the sexes that provide the major incentive for the partners tomarry. On the basis of this argument Becker comes to the conclusionthat the gain from marriage is reduced by a rise in the earnings andlabor force participation of women . .. because a sexual division of laborbecomes less advantageous (Becker 1981, p. 248). The effects are thatwomen increasingly delay or even avoid marriageand that marital insta-bility increases.Becker (1981) has drawn conclusions from his economic approach tothe family not only with respect to entry into marriage and its stability,but also in relation to the decision to have children. According to Becker(1981) the production and rearing of children is one of the main purposesof families. Families use market goods and services, as well as the timeof parents, to achieve this goal. Because of the sex-specific differentiationof labor in the family, it is especially the mother's time that is the majorpart of the total cost of producing and rearing children. Increases in thevalue of women's time as a result of increases in investments in educationand career opportunities will therefore immediately affect the relativecosts of children. Thus Becker argues that a growth in the earningpower of women raises . . . the relative cost of children and therebyreduces the demand for children (Becker 1981, pp. 245-47).To sum up, the hypothesis proposed on the basis of the economicapproach to the family is that the significance of marriage and childrenfor women is decreased to the extent that they increase their investmentsin education and job careers. The higher the level of education of womenand the better their job perspectives, the more they will try to postponeor even to avoid marriage and motherhood.However, there may be other reasons for changes in the timing offamily formation (Hoem 1986; Etzler 1987) stemming from educationalexpansion. Participation in the educational system takes time and affectswomen's ability to marry and to have a first child. When a woman is146


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Schooling, Career, and Family Formationattending school, a university, or vocational training programs in theFederal Republic of Germany, she is economically highly dependent onher parents. Further, there exist normative expectations in society thatyoung people who attend school are not at risk of entering marriageand parenthood. Moreover, the roles of students and mothers are suffi-ciently demanding that most women delay fertility until they have leftschool (Rindfuss et al. 1988). Finishing one's education therefore countsas one of the important prerequisites for entering into marriage and par-enthood (Featherman, Hogan, and S0rensen 1984). This is also true forwomen as, over the past four decades, their schooling has become moreimportant and their opportunity costs of dropping out of school beforecompletion have risen sharply (Oppenheimer 1988). Apart from the quan-tity of human capital investments, we therefore expect that there is alsoan effect of the simple fact that women are participating in the educa-tional system.A MODEL OF EDUCATIONALAND CAREERINVESTMENTSAS ALIFETIMEPROCESSFor the purpose of empirically assessing the hypothesis of a negativeeffect of educational and career investments on family formation in alongitudinal model, we must first solve the problem of how to measurethe continuously changing educational and career investments of women.Accumulation of human capital is a lifetime process and must be modeleddynamically as such over the life course. In the Federal Republic ofGermany this accumulation takes place in the general educational andthe vocational training systems and, after the person enters the labormarket, in on-the-job training. This means that it is necessary to differen-tiate between the accumulation of general and vocational qualificationswithin the educational system on the one hand, and the accumulation ofworkplace-related labor-force experience on the other.Accumulation of General and Vocational Qualifications in theEducational SystemIn order to model the accumulation of general and vocational qualifica-tions in the general school system, the vocational training system, andthe university system of the Federal Republic of Germany, we use theaverage number of years required to obtain them: lower-school qualifica-tion without vocational training = 9 years; lower-secondary-school quali-fication with vocational training = 11 years; intermediate-school qualifi-cation without vocational training = 10 years; intermediate-schoolqualification with vocational training = 12 years; upper-secondary-

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American Journal of Sociologyschool qualification (Abitur) = 13 years; professional college qualification= 17 years; university degree = 19 years. To model changes in theaccumulation of these qualifications over the life course, we have updatedfor each woman the level of education at the age when she obtained aparticulareducational rank in this hierarchy. For example, for a womanwho attains a lower-school qualification at age 14, reaches theintermediate-school qualification at age 16, leaves school with an Abiturat age 19, and finally finishes her studies at the university at age 25, wewould obtain a picture of changing levels of education over the life courseas shown in figure 2. The explanation of the new home economics isthat such increasing levels of education raise a woman's labor-marketattachment, thereby leading to greaterdelays in marriageand childbirth.However, as we discussed above, we also expect an effect of the factthat women are participating in the educational system. In order to in-clude this influence in our model, we generated a time-dependent dummyvariable indicating whether or not a woman is attending the educationalsystem at a specific age (see the lower part of fig. 2).Accumulation of Labor-Force Experience by On-the-Job TrainingAfter leaving the educational system and entering into employment,women accumulate labor-force experience at their workplaces (Becker1975). Economists (Mincer 1974; Becker 1975) and sociologists (S0rensen1977; S0rensen and Tuma 1981) have often used time in the labor forceas a proxy for the accumulation of labor-forceexperience. But this proce-dure can be criticized on the basis of research on labor-market segmenta-tion. First, there is a so-called secondary labor market in the economy,offering relatively low-paying, unstable employment with poor chancesof accumulating any labor-force experience at all (see, e.g., Doeringerand Piore 1971). Second, in some positions within so-called internal labormarkets the opportunities to accumulate labor-force experience are veryunequally distributed (e.g., Doeringer 1967;Piore 1968). Likewise, differ-ences in the opportunity to acquire labor-force experience may also existamong the self-employed and people working in different kinds of profes-sions. This means that the speed and levels of the accumulation of labor-force experience must be modeled as dependent on the type of positions.For the dynamic modeling of job-specific investments in human capitalover the life course, we therefore made the three conjectures describedbelow.1. Development of career resources after entry into first em-ployment.-Women who have left the educational system and enteredtheir first job accumulate labor-force experience with decreasing incre-ments. Because on-the-job training is concentrated mainly in the earlier148


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Schooling, Career, and Family Formation

University degree

Abitur

Middle level second. school lLower evelsecond. chool

14 18 22 26 30 34

yesIntraming?

no rI I I I I I I I I I I |Ii I I I lI I I I I I

14 18 22 26 30 34ageinyearsFIG. 2.-Educational career over the life course

phases of employment, increases are large at the beginning and level offwith increasing time in the job. This means that increments and finallevels of labor-force experience should be modeled with dependence ona measure of the goodness of the job, for example, the prestige score,P, of jobs. The mathematical model of the growth rate r(P, t) of careerresources at age t, assuming that the first job was entered at age to0 isthen (t ' to)r(P, t) = exp(-c x (t -to))

wherex= (Pmax - Pmin/2)IP = 83.4/P.

Here P is Wegeners' (1985) prestige score, which is used as a proxymeasure for the goodness of jobs and for the opportunity to accumu-late labor-force experience within a job. Given this model, the level ofcareer resources K(P, t) within a job episode at age t is then defined as:

tK(P, t) = exp[ r(P, u)du -1.u=to149


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American Journal of SociologyUntil entry into the first job, the level of career resourcesK(P, t) is equalto zero. The maximum level of career resources, max[K(P, t)], within ajob with the lowest prestige score (a helper with a prestige score of 20.0on the Wegener scale), for example, is reached after nine months and hasthe value 0.27. For a job with the highest prestige score on the Wegenerscale (a medical doctor) the maximum level of career resources is reachedafter about 9-10 years and has a value of 8.15.2. Changeof jobs. -If a woman changes from a job with prestige levelP0 to a job with prestige level Ph > P0 at time tl, which is an upwardmove, here career resources will increase until the maximum career levelof the new job is reached. In this case the career function for t > t, is:2

K(Ph, t) = min{K(P0, tl) + K[Ph, (t - t1)], max[K(Ph, t)]}.If a woman changes from a job with prestige level P0 to a job with aprestige level Pn < P0 at time t2 (a downward move), the career resourcesof the preceding job are linearly decreased over time and the careerresources of the successive job are increased over time. However, themaximum career level of the preceding job is considered to be the upperlimit. Thus, with increasing time, the level of career resourcesis decreas-ing and will approach the maximum career level of the successive job.For t > t2 the level of career resources is obtained as follows:

[min{[1 - (1.51PO) x (t - t2)] x K(Po, t2)K(Pn, t) = + K(Pn, (t - t2)), K(Po, t2)}, if t - t2 < Pol1.5,tK(Pn, (t - t2)), otherwise.Figure 3 shows an example for the accumulation of career resources if awoman at first moves upward (from job 1 to job 2).3. Discontinuity of work experience.-Besides continuous changes ofthe level of career resources as a result of upward and downward moves,we also recognize that women tend to have several entries into and exitsfrom the labor force after leaving school because of family events (mar-riage, birth of children, etc.) (Mincer and Polachek 1974; Tolke 1989;Handl 1988). Given this discontinuity of work experience, the assumptionthat career resources monotonically increase with decreasing incrementsover the work life that is normally made for the career process of menin labor-market research (S0rensen 1977) is no longer valid. If womeninterrupt their work careers, then they will lose career resources thatmust be reaccumulated when they reenter the labor force. To model thepath of labor-forceexperience of women we therefore assume that career2 In thefollowing ormulamax[K(Ph, t)] is thehighestvaluea womancan reach njobh. The formula (Ph, t) thensaysthatherresourcesquala value hat ncreaseswithtime,until he maximumevel-max[K(P,,t)]-is reached.150


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Schooling, Career, and Family Formation

4,54 leaving he labor orce reentering

3,5

K(P,t) 2,5

/o1.bJob

0,50

18 22 26 30 34 38age in years

FIG. 3.-Career resourcesover the life course:an occupational areerwith aphase of nonemployment.

resources decline when women experience an interruption (I) in theirwork career at age t as long as women's career resources are still positive.The speed of the decrease is thereby dependent on the prestige level (P0)of the job held immediately before the interruption of the career. For t> t3 we get:

K(I, t) = max[O,1 - {(1.5/PO) x (t - t3) x K(Po, t3)}].Figure 3 shows an example for a trajectory of career resources includinga work interruption, and a reentry into job 3.

DATA, HAZARDRATEMODELS,AND VARIABLESDataThe hypotheses derived from the new home economics are empiricallyassessed against life histories of 2,171 German respondents from cohortsborn 1929-31, 1939-41, and 1949-51, collected between October 1981and May 1983 by Karl Ulrich Mayer (1979). His objective was to recordthe life histories of the respondents over sociologically relevant domains(social background, education, job career, family, fertility, housing, etc.).The data were collected retrospectively by asking respondents to recon-struct, with exact dates, their life histories within these domains (Bloss-feld et al. 1989; Carroll and Mayer 1986). A detailed description of thestudy is given by Mayer and Bruckner (1989). Lengthy and extensivedata editing, data checks, and cross-comparisons vouch for the quality

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American Journal of Sociologyof the collected information. Several empirical studies assessing the qual-ity of retrospective data and their representativeness show that the Ger-man Life History Study satisfies high standards (Blossfeld 1987b; Hui-nink 1988a).Because the data not only cover educational and occupational trajecto-ries but also provide family-history information, we are able to study ina dynamic way how time-related changes in the educational and jobcareer affect the rate of entry into marriage and motherhood. Further-more, we can at the same time control for other important sources ofinfluence, for example, nonmonotonic age dependencies of rates of entryinto marriage and motherhood, influences of social origin, characteristicsof the husband, and measures indicating aspects of the development ofhistorical and economic structures.MethodsA wide range of statistical tools is available for the analysis of time-related life-course data. A comprehensive overview of these methods ofevent-history analysis is given, for example, by Blossfeld et al. (1989)and by Tuma and Hannan (1984). We specify as the dependent variablethe instantaneous rate of entry into marriage or motherhood, defined as

r(t) = lim P(t ' T < t + AtIT?2 t)lAt,At-*OAt > o,

where PO is the transition probability of entering into marriage ormotherhood in the interval (t, t + At), respectively, provided that suchan entry has not occurred before the beginning of this interval. Our goalis to specify the rates of entry into marriage and motherhood [r(t)] as afunction of time-constant (X1) and time-dependent covariates [X2(t)]inan exponential model:

r(t) = exp[P31Xl+ 132X2(t)].Observation begins at age 15 and ends with the event of first marriageor the birth of the first child or, for right-censored cases, with the dateof the interview or age 45, whichever is earlier.To introduce the time-dependent effects into the rate equation, we usethe method of episode splitting (Blossfeld et al. 1989). A separate datarecord was created at each month. For each record four different piecesof information were provided: (i) time at the beginning and end of theinterval to which the record pertains; (ii) the values of the time-dependentcovariates at the beginning of these intervals; (iii) whether the interval

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Schooling, Career, and Family Formationended with an event or not; and (iv) the values of the other covariatesrelevant for the analysis.

Rate-function coefficients and their t-ratios are helpful in ascertaininghow educational and career investments of women influence first mother-hood and first birth, in what direction, and at what level of significance.However, the magnitude of the effects and their substantive significanceare more easily assessed by examining survivor functions. Therefore onthe basis of the model we estimated survivor functions for different edu-cational and occupational careers that show the probability of a woman'sremaining unmarried or childless until age t:8(t) = exp[ Ju= )d

VariablesWe used a combination of two variables to control for the well-knownnonmonotonic age dependence of the marriage rate and the rate of thefirst birth (Coale 1971; Bloom 1982). This approach assumes that womenare at risk of entering first marriage and of having a first child betweenthe ages 15 and 45 (i is an index for the ith one-month interval):log(Di) :log(current age - 15),

log(Ri) log(45 - currentage).Including these variables in the exponential model as time-dependentcovariates,

exp[log(Di) x 3' + log(Ri) x ] DP' x Rimodels the typical bell-shaped curve of the rates of entry into first mar-riage and first motherhood. This curve is symmetric around the age 30for O3'= 13 , eft skewed for 13'< 13 ,nd right skewed for 13'> 13 .As time-constant background variables we include father's social class,residence at age 15 (town vs. country where country is the referencecategory), number of siblings, and the educational level of the partner.Father's social class was measured as social class 1 = lower workingclass, social class 2 = upper working class, social class 3 = lower middleclass, and social class 4 = upper middle class (Blossfeld 1988). Class 1is used here as the reference category.To control for cohort and period effects of general historical and eco-nomic developments on family decisions, we introduced two differenttypes of variables. First, we used two dummy variables for the threebirth cohorts (referencegroup = cohort 1929-31) to measure differences

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American Journal of Sociologybetween cohorts. Second, we employed a variable that reflects the contin-uous development of labor-market conditions. This variable is the resultof a factor analysis of 14 different time series indicating a range of aspectsof the development of social and economic structures in the Federal Re-public of Germany (Blossfeld 1987a). This variable has already provedto be useful in several empirical labor-market studies and can be inter-preted here as measuring period effects of the business cycle (see fig. 4).Marriage and childbirth are connected processes. Premarital conceptionincreases the readiness of women to enter into marriage and marriageincreases the risk of childbirth. Therefore we also included a time-dependent indicator for pregnancy in the marriage model and a time-dependent indicator for being married in the first-birth model.

RESULTSEffects on the Rate of Entry into First MarriageLet us begin the analysis with the question of how the improvement ofeducational and career opportunities of women has affected their entryinto first marriage. We find it most useful to control in a stepwise mannerfor other important influences before we focus on the variables of interesthere, namely, the dynamic level of education and the dynamic level ofcareer resources.All coefficients in the models are metric coefficients, but we will notcompare the relative magnitudes of the effects of different variableswithin models because they depend on the scale by which variables aremeasured. Instead, we rely on the significance level of variables to deter-mine whether there is an important influence of a variable or not. Inevaluating a model's performance, we also use a likelihood-ratio testcomparing the model to a baseline. The baseline for all models is model1, the model of a constant rate. This test gives chi-square values that arereported in tables 1 and 2.Model 2 in table 1 includes, in a first step, two independent vari-ables-log(current age - 15) and log(45 - current age)-as discussedearlier. Both coefficients are significant, which means that there is indeeda nonmonotonic pattern of the marriagerate in the data. Because the acoefficient of log(45 - current age) is greater than the 13 oefficient oflog(current age - 15), we have a left-skewed bell-shaped path of therate. This type of structure of the age dependence of the marriage rateremains the same across all models.Model 3 in table 1 introduces, in a third step, several social backgroundvariables: father's social class, number of siblings, and type of residenceat age 15. These variables are considered important for family formation154


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Schooling, Career, and Family FormationIndex 2

0

-2

-4

-6 -6Schoo ~~~~~~~., ....,,. ,.. .1 5 19851940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985

yearFIG. 4. -Index of economic development in the Federal Republic of Germanybetween 1945 and 1985.

in the demographic and sociological literature (e.g., Rindfuss and St.John 1983). The number of siblings has no significant effect on the rateof entry into marriage.More interesting from a sociological point of view are the effects of thedummy variables of father's social class in model 3 of table 1. Theseestimates show that women from lower social classes marry earlier thanwomen from higher social classes. Theory would suggest that this reflectsdifferences in class-specific resources determining social opportunities forchildren. These resources constitute not only income positions, proper-ties, consumption styles, and economic strategies of families, but alsotheir social orientations, values, and beliefs, which influence educationaland career decisions of children (e.g., Blossfeld 1989; Huinink 1987). Inlater steps of this analysis we will see to what extent these effects ofsocial origin have been transformed over the life course into prolongedschooling and improved career opportunities and which effect of socialclass on family formation remains after these influences are controlledfor.In model 3 of table 1 we also observe that entry into first marriage isnot dependent on regional differences. Women who grew up in urbanresidences do not marry either earlier or later than women who grew upin the country.Model 4 in table 1 incorporates measures of changes of the historicalbackgroundsuch as cohort membership (modeled as a cohort effect) andeconomic development (modeled as a period effect). We find no signifi-cant cohort effect, but we observe a significant positive effect of the stateof the economy (model 4 in table 1). This is to say that women enter into

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057 42.2bi) > U>Acd 4-,15


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American Journal of Sociologymarriage earlier when the economic situation is favorable. In a period ofeconomic expansion, the life-cycle prospects of young people are morepredictable, and it is therefore easier for women to make such long-termdecisions as entering into marriage (Oppenheimer 1988).After having controlled for these theoretically important social andeconomic factors for women's age of marriage, we can now try to answerthe question of how important improvements in educational and careeropportunities have been for women's timing of marriage.We look first at the dynamic effects of education. As discussed above,the theoretical importance of education may be viewed from two differentperspectives. First, from the perspective of the new home economists,the accumulation of human capital as reflected by an increasing level ofeducation increases women's labor-market attachment and thereby leadsto greater marriage delays (Mincer 1974; Becker 1975). Second, from asociological point of view, there exist normative expectations in the soci-ety that young people who attend school are not at risk of enteringmarriage. Finishing education, and thus ending the period of economicdependence on parents, should therefore count as one of the importantevents for entering into the adulthood status, and thereby becoming atrisk of marriage(Oppenheimer 1988; Blossfeld and Nuthmann 1989). Wehave constructed dynamic, time-dependent measures for both aspects ofthe effects of education and included them in model 6 of table 1. Thismodel shows that attending school, vocational training programs, or auniversity has indeed a strong negative effect on the rate of entry intomarriage. However, and this is very interesting, the effect of the level ofeducation is not significant. Women's timing of marriage is thereforeindependent of the quantity of human capital investments. In assessingthe consequences of educational expansion on family formation, we cantherefore conclude that marriage is postponed because women postponetheir transition from youth to adulthood and not because women acquiregreater quantities of human capital, thereby increasing their labor-forceattachment.Once we have controlled for educational histories of women, the effectsof father's social class prove to be much smaller. In other words, differentresourcesof social origin have been completely transformed over the lifecourse not only in class-structuredmarriage patterns but also in differen-tial times of school attendance. Parents of higher social classes providetheir children with better opportunities to attain higher levels of educa-tion and to stay in the educational system longer, thereby delaying theirentry into marriage.Now, we need to assess the role of the improvement of careeropportu-nities in the timing of women's marriage. To do this, we includedwomen's continous changes of the level of career resources over the life158


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Schooling, Career, and Family Formationcourse in model 7 of table 1. Again, and of great interest, this variableproves to be not significant. Women's entry into marriage is thereforeapparently independent of their career opportunities.In model 7 of table 1 a time-dependent pregnancy indicator is included.It does not change the substantive findings above, but its effect is positiveand very strong. This indicates that, for women experiencing premaritalpregnancy, the marriage rate increases sharply.3To consider changes in the meaning and importance of education andjob career across cohorts of women (as a consequence of the educationalexpansion and the changing occupational structure), we finally includedinteraction effects of cohort membership with level of education and levelof career resources. No interaction effect was significant, and they aretherefore not reported in table 1.Effects on the Rate of Entry into First MotherhoodLet us now consider changes in the age at which women have their firstchild (table 2). We observe very similar effects for age dependence andsocial class in the first four models of table 2 to those in table 1. Becausetheir interpretationis analogous, we do not repeat the substantive expla-nation. However, different findings emerge for the number of siblingsand the variable urban residence at age 15. The number of siblingshas a positive effect on the rate of entry into motherhood. The higherthe number of siblings, the earlier women have their first child. This isin accordance with findings of earlier studies (Huinink 1987; Huininkand Tuma 1988). Women who grew up in larger families are not onlysystematically disadvantaged in their educational career but are alsomore strongly socialized toward a career as a housewife and mother.They are therefore more inclined to have children earlier and to havemore children (Huinink 1988b).The effect of type of residence at age 15 is significant and negative.Women from rural areas bear their first child earlier than women fromurban regions. This is also a well-known finding from other studies (e.g.,Huinink 1987; Huinink and Wagner 1989).Because the partner's current and future socioeconomic characteristicsare important for the process of family formation, we have also to controlfor these influences in our model. From a theoretical point of view, levelof education, income position, and occupational position of the partnerare important. However, longitudinal labor-market studies show that3 We know that about one-third of the women in our sample get pregnant the firsttime before their first marriages. However, only about 7% of all women had anillegitimate child before the interview date (Huinink 1988b).

159


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American Journal of Sociologythere is a strong positive correlationbetween a person's level of qualifica-tion and his first job (Blossfeld 1987b), his income trajectory (Blossfeld,Hannan, and Sch6mann 1988), and his career opportunities (Blossfeld1989). In order to control for the economic position of the partner in theanalysis of entry into motherhood it seems therefore to be sufficient touse only one of these characteristics: the educational level (Zimmermann1985). Model 5 in table 2 shows that the effect of this indicator on therate of entry into motherhood is negative. This means the higher thelevel of education-and, thereby, the better the job, income, and careerperspectives of the partner-the later women enter into motherhood. Wewill come back to this effect when we discuss model 8 of table 2.

After having controlled for several important influences in table 2, weinclude in model 6 women's continuously changing level of education andan indicator for their participation in the educational system to explainthe rate of entry into motherhood. However, as in the marriage model,the level of education, which measures women's general human capitalinvestments, has no significant influence on the timing of the first birth.Instead, once again, attending an educational institution negatively af-fects women's rate of having a first child. This means that there existconflicting time commitments between women's roles as students andmothers (Rindfuss et al. 1988) as well as normative expectations thatyoung women who attend school are not at risk of entering into parent-hood. Finishing education, as one of the important steps for entering intothe adulthood status (see, e.g., Blossfeld and Nuthmann 1989), thus leadsto a steep rise in the rate of entering into parenthood.If changes in career resources of women over the life course are intro-duced in model 7 of table 2, in constrast to the expectations of the eco-nomic approach to the family, the effect of the level of education provesto be even significant and positive. This means that the process of at-taining successively higher levels of qualification has an augmenting,rather than diminishing, effect on the rate of having a first child. Thereason is that the attainment of increasing levels of education takes timeand is connected with an increasing age of women (fig. 2). Women whoremain in the educational system longer and attain high qualificationsare subject to pressure not only from the potential increase of medicalproblems with lateness of first births, but from societal age norms as well(i.e., Women should have their first child at least by 30 [Menken1985]). Thus, not human capital investments, as claimed by the newhome economics, but this increasing pressure might be in force, if thelevel of education has an effect on the timing of the first birth.This is also illustrated in figure 5. In this figure we report estimates ofthe age-specific cumulative proportion childless (survivor function) for

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Schooling, Career, and Family Formation0,90,8 .0,7 .\0,6 \\

NPalt 0 5 \childlesson0,40.30.20,1

0 I16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34

Age- - - - - - - -lower school qualificadon at age 15,no training,nojob_ - - uppr secondaryschool qualificationat age 20, no uaining, nojobuniversitydegreeatage 27, so job

FIG. 5.-Estimated cumulatedproportionof childless womenby education(survivor unction).different levels of education.4 The longer women are in the educationalsystem, the longer they delay their first birth; therefore these womenshow a high proportion of childlessness. After leaving the educationalsystem, those women who have delayed having children catch up withtheir contemporaries who have less education and who got an earlierstart. However, they not only catch up. The positive effect of the educa-tional level pushes the proportion of childless women with upper-secondary-school qualifications (at about age 20) and even those withuniversity degrees (at about age 27) under the proportion of childlesswomen with lower-school qualifications.A confirmationof the economic approach to the family, however, maybe seen in the negative effect of the level of career resources on therate of entry into motherhood (model 7 of table 2). The accumulation ofwomen's career resources conflicts with societal expectations that areconnected with a woman's role as mother. Women still take primaryresponsibility for child care. And women are still disadvantaged in theircareers when they must interrupt their work life because of the birth ofa child (Ott and Rolf 1987). Women who have accumulated a high stockof career resources, therefore, try to postpone or even to avoid the birthof the first child.Figure 6 displays examples of age-specific, cumulated proportionschildless (survivor function) for ideal-typical career lines.5 This exercise4 Theseestimateswereobtainedrommodel7 oftable2 byholding onstant llothervariables t themeanandassuminghe womenwerenotemployed.5 Again heseestimates re obtained rommodel7 of table2 byholding onstant llothervariables t the mean.

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American Journal of Sociology0,9-. \

0,7

childless

0,3

0.10 i~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34Age

- - - - - - - -lower school qualificaiaxn t age 15, no Usining,nskise d job_ - - uer seco.edy schol quabfiao a age 20. publc servicesunieesity degew a age 27, manager n psvaescaer

FIG. 6.-Estimated cumulatedproportion f childlesswomenforideal-typicalcareer ines(survivor unction).

shows that there is a conflict between career and motherhood. An in-crease in career opportunities augments the proportion childless at anyage.In model 8 of table 2 we introduced a time-dependent dummy variablethat changes its value at marriage and thus shows whether or not awoman was married before the birth of the first child. This variableincreases the rate of entry into motherhood remarkably. When this vari-able is introduced, one can observe that the negative effects of in train-ing and level of career resources become weaker. Part of their influ-ence is therefore mediated by the marriage process. This is even morepronounced for the effects of partner'seducation and economic de-velopment, which both lose their significance. The higher the educa-tional level of the partner, the later women marry and, mediated by thetime of marriage, the later women have their first child. One reason forthis fact is that there is a high degree of socioeconomic endogamy in theFederal Republic of Germany (Mayer 1977; Haller 1982; Ziegler 1985;Handl 1988). This means that there are important mechanisms of socialinequality guiding the process of assortative mating, namely, social net-works and differential opportunities to meet prospective spouses in selec-tive social institutions such as schools and universities. Another reason

is that better-educated men with good jobs, incomes, and careerperspec-tives need more time to arrive at an age that makes it easier to estimatewhat long-run socioeconomic position accompanies any potential mar-riage (Oppenheimer 1988).The fact that economic development also loses its significance aftermarriage is controlled for means that the more favorable the economic162


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Schooling, Career, and Family Formationsituation, the earlier women marry, and, mediated by entry into mar-riage, the earlier they will have their first child.

When marriage is introduced as a time-dependent variable, the effectof cohort 1949-50 becomes significantly negative. This reflects twothings. First, young adults of the 1949-51 cohort could leave the parentalhome earlier and had to marry if they wanted to live together (see table1). But second, these young adults had better access to contraceptivemethods, especially the use of oral contraceptives, that allowed them tocontrol fertility better and to postpone the birth of the first child. Thismeans that there is an increased gap between the time of marriage andthe time of the first birth, which also partly explains the sharply increasedgainful employment rate of married women.Finally, we have considered how changes in the meaning and impor-tance of education and job career across cohorts of women (as a conse-quence of the educational expansion and the changing occupational struc-ture) have affected the rate of entry into motherhood. But again, theinteraction effects of cohort membership with level of education and levelof career resources are not significant. We therefore do not report theseeffects in table 2.SUMMARYAND CONCLUSIONSOur purpose in this article has been to assess empirically the hypothesis ofthe new home economics that women's growing economic independence,resulting from better education and improved career opportunities, is oneof the major factors in the rise in delayed marriage and motherhood inthe Federal Republic of Germany. Using life-history data, we modelededucational and career investments of women as a continuously changingprocess over the life course and estimated their effects on the rate of entryinto first marriage and birth of first child.First, in analyzing the process of first marriage, we showed that, acrosscohorts, educational expansion has a delaying effect on the timing of thefirst marriage. But this effect is not the result of an increase in the quan-tity of human capital investments of women, as posited by the new homeeconomics. Rather, women's longer participation in the educational sys-tem affects their ability to marry. There exist normative expectations inthe society that young women who attend school are not at risk of enter-ing marriage. The delaying effect of education on the timing of firstmarriageis therefore a result of the fact that, across cohorts, educationalexpansion has increased the time of educational participation and hasdelayed the transition from youth to adulthood. Accumulation of qualifi-cations takes time and delays these transitions (Blossfeld and Nuthmann1989).

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American Journal of SociologyWomen's housewife role in the family and their labor-market attach-ment proved not to be in conflict. The economic theory of the family,

assuming that after marriage women immediately interrupt their marketwork and invest mainly in qualifications that raise their household effi-ciency, is therefore in some sense too traditional to describe today's em-pirical reality. The timing of family decisions of women is influencedneither by their level of education nor by their level of career resources.Support for the hypotheses of the new home economics, claimed on thebasis of cross-sectional and aggregated time-series data, is thus probablythe result of the methods and type of data used. These are not able todifferentiate between the effect of accumulation of human capital overthe life course and the effect of participation in the educational systemin keeping women out of the marriage market.Legal marriages were accepted as the only legitimate societal institu-tion of living together during the period between 1940 and the early1970s. This norm was not affected by the improvement of women's edu-cational attainment and women's job opportunities. Instead of immedi-ately interrupting their work after marriage, women increasingly re-mained in the labor force (T6lke 1989). And this is exactly what hasturned out to be one of the major changes in women's employment afterWorld War II in the Federal Republic of Germany (Muller, Willms,and Handl 1983; Handl 1988). While the labor-force participation ofunmarried women has declined over the past 40 years, the labor-forceparticipation of married women has increased remarkably (see alsoBracher 1988). In Germany, income-tax regulations (the so-called split-ting table or Splittingtabelle) even provide an incentive for entry intomarriage.The analysis of the effect of educational and career investments on therate of entry into motherhood has also provided interesting results.Again, prolonged participation in the educational system leads to a delayin women's transition to adulthood and thereby to a delay in their hav-ing a first child. Thus, across cohorts, educational expansion retardswomen's decisions to have children. However, the effect of the level ofeducation on the rate of entrance into motherhood completely contradictspredictions based on the economic approach to the family. Instead ofobserving a negative sign of women's educational investments, we founda positive coefficient: the process of attaining successively higher levelsof qualification increases the rate of having a first child and, as it turnsout, decreases the cumulative proportionchildless. This is because attain-ment of increasing levels of education takes time and is connected withwoman's increasing age (see fig. 2). More highly qualified women, be-cause they leave the educational system later, come increasingly underpressure from the greater medical problems of late first births as well as164


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Schooling, Career, and Family Formationfrom societal age norms (Menken 1985). Women who stay longer in theeducational system and attain higher educational resources catch up withtheir contemporaries with lower levels of education.A confirmation of the new home economics, however, may be seen inthe negative effect of the level of career resources on the rate of entryinto motherhood. In German society there still exists an economicallybased conflict between women's accumulation of career resources andsocietal expectations connected with a woman's role as mother. The eco-nomic approach to the family is therefore right insofar as women arestill primarily responsible for the rearing of children. Thus, women withincreasing career resources are faced increasingly with a conflict and tryto postpone or even to avoid the birth of the first child. With furtherimprovement of career opportunities of younger cohorts of women, re-solving this conflict will turn out to be increasingly important for thesociety.

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Blossfeld Human Capital Investments or Norms