CBS News: Rising Number Of Childless Women

[Larkspur]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/24/national/main579973.shtml

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...26.7 million women ages 15 to 44 who are childless, according to new Census Bureau data from a June 2002 survey. That's 44 percent of all the women in that age group - a record number, and ten percent more than in 1990, when roughly 24.3 million women that age had not given birth.
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The percentage of women 40 to 44 — those at the end of their childbearing years — who have not given birth has hovered around 18 percent since 1994, but that's up from 10 percent in 1976.

Women with higher incomes had the highest childless rates.
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"Economic reasons are part of it, but it's also the effect of the women's movement, that you don't have to be a mother to be a complete woman," she (Amy Caizza, study director for the Institute for Women's Policy Research) said.

Just over half of Asian women were childless, the highest rate among race and ethnic groups. It was 46 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 39 percent for blacks and 36 percent for Hispanics.
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Key phrase -- "it's also the effect of the women's movement, that you don't have to be a mother to be a complete woman". That's my view exactly.

[DUreader]

1. starts at age 15

hmm

[ant]

2. and thank god for it!

The women's movement, that is. It's nice that women have options now, and that you're not seen to be (as) incomplete or problematic if you choose not to marry and/or have kids.

This part stuck out for me:
Women with higher incomes had the highest childless rates.

Chicken or egg? If I had to guess my bet would be that childless women are more likely to have higher incomes rather than the other way around.