The claim that rising education is strongly linked to lower fertility rates is sometimes true and always misleading.

In the U.S., black women are the only large demographic where rising education unambiguously leads to lower fertility. Black women who don’t finish high school have a total fertility rate of 2.5, dropping to 1.9 if they graduate from high school, to just over 1.4 if they have some college and to just under 1.4 if they graduate from college.

With Asian and white women, college graduates have higher total fertility rates than high school graduates or women with some college.

The bottom line: a woman’s level of education teaches us nothing about fertility on its own.