Educational Gradients in Completed Fertility Across Europe: Parity Polarisation and the Moderating Role of Work-Family Support

On the one hand, higher education can encourage childbearing through the income effect. On the other hand, it also raises opportunity costs, potentially reducing fertility through the substitution effect. While the traditionally negative association between education and fertility has been attributed to these costs, recent findings suggest more nuanced, parity-specific patterns. In this context, we pursue two objectives: 1) to examine the overall association between educational attainment and parity-specific completed fertility; 2) to investigate whether—and how—country-level work-family support moderates this relationship. We use data from the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS-II) and conduct meta-analyses and meta-regressions using macro-level indicators. Corroborating previous evidence on educational parity polarisation, education is generally positively associated with having 1-2 children (vs. childlessness) and consistently negatively associated with having 3+ children (vs. 1-2). Moreover, in countries with stronger work-family support, the positive income effect of high (but not medium) education relative to low education more strongly outweighs its negative substitution effect. This mechanism operates either by strengthening the positive association at lower parities or by weakening the negative association at higher parities. We contribute to the literature by examining how country-level work-family support moderates the association between education and parity-specific (rather than overall) completed fertility.