That’s one of the findings in a new piece of research out from the U.S. Census. The headline news from Fertility of American Women: 2006 is that 20% of women aged 40 to 44 have no children, twice the level of 30 years ago.
But what was really surprising to me was that of the women still having kids, those in the Midwest are more likely to go back to work within the first year. Check out this map:
Jane Lawler Dye, the author of the report, speculates that maybe it’s because there are more day care options for mothers in that part of the country. I called her up, and she pointed me to this other map:
Pretty similar, no?
I guess I always assumed new mothers go back to work for reasons related to either career (they want to) or finances (they have to). That the number of working mothers could be tied to a structural element—more working mothers because more entrepreneurs decide to open day care centers—is pretty interesting.
It’s also, I should point out, half-baked. That’s not a knock at Dye—she was clear that her linking of these two things was not a scientifically tested conclusion. She didn’t say there was cause and effect; she simply highlighted the data overlap.
To learn more, she suggested I talk to her colleague, child care expert Lynda Laughlin. Laughlin took me to some data tables that showed children under five in the South are more likely to be in day care than children in the Northeast, Midwest or West. Just because mothers in the Midwest have more access to day care doesn’t mean they use it at a higher rate.
So what’s going on? Beats me. It’s not exactly perfect methodology to mix these data sets, since one is measuring women and the other is measuring their kids (and the number of kids per mother varies by region). We’re also being pretty lose with our definitions—the statement that there are more working mothers “in the Midwest” comes from eyeballing a map. Still, I think it’s a fascinating area for more research, and I told Dye and Laughlin that. Or maybe someone should put in a call to Steven Levitt.
Barbara!