Later Pregnancy Gives Women More Money—and More Caesareans

It's no secret that waiting to reproduce can be a serious economic boon for women. We even have hard evidence, with University of Virginia economist Amalia Miller's study showing that each year a woman delays having children increases her career earnings by 10 percent. But the cultural rise of delayed childbirth also has serious costs, both for the health of the mother and child, and for the health-care system. A paper published this week by researchers at Cambridge University found that the recent and substantial rise in babies delivered by Caesarean section is linked to the major increase in the number of older mothers. After examining more than 500,000 entries in the Scottish Morbidity Record between 1980 and 2005, the authors found the following: