Family Size Expectations of Young American Jewish Adults

Publication Date: January 1989

Publisher: Institute of Contemporary Jewry

Author(s): Calvin Goldscheider; Frances K. Goldscheider

Research Area: Population and demographics

Keywords: American Jews; Demography; Family

Type: Report

Coverage: United States

Abstract:

In Jewish Population Studies 19 (Papers in Jewish Demography, 1985), 133-148. In period fertility rates, it is not simple to disentangle the relative importance of changes in completed family size from changes in the timing of marriage or the tempo of childbearing. Yet, the centrality of the issue for Jewish community in the U.S. requires that alternative sources of data be explored which may help in interpreting period levels of below-replacement fertility and which may provide guidelines for projecting the eventual family size of cohorts currently within the childbearing period. We examine one such alternative source of data: the birth expectations of a cohort of American Jews who will be having children into the 21st century. These expectations data suggest strongly that there is little or no basis for expecting cohort fertility below replacement levels.