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SALT LAKE CITY — Those of the millennial generation with less education are more likely to be single parents, a new study reveals.
Johns Hopkins University released a report titled “Changing Fertility Regimes and the Transition to Adulthood: Evidence from a Recent Cohort” that showed the trend of 20-somethings who don’t seek higher education and who are choosing to have children out of wedlock.
The abstract of the report indicated 81 percent of births reported by women ages 26-31 were to non-college graduates. Eighty-seven percent of men of the same age and education status reported becoming a father. Additionally, 57 percent of births occurred outside of marriage.
In Utah, those numbers vary slightly. Census data released in May 2013 indicated Utah had the lowest rate of babies born to unmarried women with 14.7 percent in 2011. The national average, according to census data, was 35.7 percent.
In an article about the study and its implications, The Guardian said there was a chance circumstances had prevented young women with children from attending college.
“I don’t think that that’s happening," Andrew Cherlin, lead researcher of the Johns Hopkins University study, told The Guardian, adding that college graduates are "the winners in our globalized economy."
Unmarried, less-educated women, on the other hand, "can’t see the future and so have no reason to put off having children," Cherlin said in the piece.
