Prague, Oct 13 (CTK) – Czech men and women are more educated than in the past, but “they pay for it” with a lower birthrate since they often postpone having a family and children, daily Pravo writes yesterday.
In 2001-2012, the expected length of young Czechs’ education rose by 2.5 years on average, and in the case of women even by 3.1 years.
Women study for 19 years on average, and this is why more and more of them have the first child at the age of around 30 and they manage to have one or maximally two children, Pravo writes, referring to statistics.
“Men enter into the first marriage almost eight years and women seven years later now than in 1989 [when the communist regime collapsed in Czechoslovakia]. At the same time, the average age of mothers who have their first baby has been rising,” said Michaela Klenkova, head of the demography and statistics section of the Czech Statistical Office (CSU).
One of the reasons is that a rising number of girls study at universities and colleges and after graduation, their priority is to find a suitable job, Pravo writes.
“To graduate from a school, take a maternity leave and start seeking the first job at the age around 30 is a sure path to a ‘professioanl suicide.’ From the employer’s viewpoint, such women are non-prospective, unwilling to work overtime or commute,” financial adviser Frantisek Machacek told Pravo.
On the other hand, no one who wants to succeed in life can do without education now, the paper says.
According to the first census in the country in 1950, more than four-fifths of the population over 15 years, and 85 percent of women, had only elementary education, only 5 percent were secondary school graduates, while two-thirds of them were men, and 1 percent were university graduates (5.5 times more men than women), Pravo writes.
Since then, the situation has completely changed. At present, more than 12 percent of Czechs have university education and a mere 42,000 of the country’s 10.5 million inhabitants had no education at all, according to the latest census in 2011.
Moreover, Czech women have started being more educated than men. In the 2001 census, the share of women with completed secondary or higher education was 38.2 percent, while that of men was 36.3 percent, and in the 2011 census, it increased to 46.2 percent (women) and 40.9 percent (men).
Pravo writes that more and more professions require a higher education and a professional career mus be started right after the completion of studies, while the number of less qualified jobs that people can take up at any age has been decreasing.
These factors harm the traditional family development, it adds.
