摘要：Fertility differences in Europe are to a large extent due to parity progression after
the first child. We therefore use data from the third round of the European Social
Survey to investigate second-birth rates in 23 countries. Focusing on the role of
education level and child care availability, we argue that child care provision is an
important determinant of the opportunity cost of parity progression, particularly
for highly educated women. We find that in countries where the highly educated
have lower second birth rates than the less educated, total fertility tends to be low,
and vice versa. In addition, the effect of the timing of the first child appears to be
mediated by education level and child care availability: in countries where large
proportions of young children attend formal child care, the more highly educated
exhibit much higher second-birth rates, while child care availability does not
affect parity progression for the less educated.
