First Marriage and First Birth Patterns by Educational Attainment in the Transiting Societies, the Netherlands, Japan and Southern India

Hideko Matsuo, Université Catholique de Louvain
Sarbani Banerjee, University of Groningen
Inge Hutter, University of Groningen

The objective of this paper is to assess the importance of educational attainment in determining first marriage and first birth patterns across different societies, the Netherlands, Japan and Southern India represented by Karnataka. We study the changes in this kind of demographic behaviour across cohorts within these countries, and also the similarities and differences across societies. The paper tries to assess whether demographic behaviour in such different societies is likely to converge in the future. Our discussion will be placed in the broader context of Demographic Transition theory and debate on whether indeed a Second Demographic Transition will take place in the same manner in non-western societies as in western ones. This paper uses micro-data from the Netherlands Family Fertility Survey 1998, the Japanese National Fertility Survey 1992, and the National Family Health Survey 1998 for Karnataka. To these data single state life table techniques are applied.