Reproductive Intentions and Cohort Fertility of Russian Women with Different Levels of Education According to Data from Various Sources
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2026.4.3055Keywords:
reproductive intentions, expected number of children, completed cohort fertility, Russian Fertility Database, 2020 Census, educational differencesAbstract
The study compares the average expected number of children and completed cohort fertility both in general and by educational level across generations of Russian women born in 1950–1979. The data on completed cohort fertility comes from the Russian Fertility Database of the HSE University and the All-Russian Population Census 2020; the data on the expected number of children comes from the national Microcensus 1994, the Generations and Gender Survey (2004) and the Sample Survey of Population Reproductive Plans (2012). The results show that the expected number of children and the completed cohort fertility of women are close to each other in generations of women born before the early 1970s, while in younger generations, differences increase due to higher reproductive expectations. For women whose reproductive period fell during the Soviet era, an inverse relationship between the level of education and both the expected number of children and the completed fertility has been confirmed, while the actual number of births is close to the planned one. Among women under 45 years of age at the time of the 2020 census, the expected number of children is uniform in level of education. However, a negative educational gradient remains in the completed cohort fertility and in the degree of under-realisation of reproductive plans. At that, women with higher education have not had about 20—25% of planned births, with secondary vocational education —15—20%, with secondary general education — about 8%. Based on the results obtained, the authors conclude that the expected number of children at young ages in Russia ceases to serve as a proxy for the completed cohort fertility. Moreover, vanishing educational differences in reproductive plans coupled with remaining gradient in their implementation indicates the increasing influence of intangible, value-related factors of fertility behaviour.
Acknowledgments. The study was implemented within the framework of the Basic Research Program at HSE University (HSE-BR-2025-012).
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