Values and disvalues of children in successive childbearing decisions

The values and disvalues that wives and husbands in the Philippines, South Korea, and the United States attach to having another child are described from national survey data. Loglinear models are used to demonstrate that both country and parity affect value and disvalues rankings, but respondent’s sex does not. The differences in values and disvalues across parities suggest a multistage model of family formation, with perceptions of successive children linked to periods in family development. It is argued that this multistage. model is consistent with changes in the value of children in the fertility transition.     

The effects of teenage childbearing on the short- and long-term health behaviors of mothers

A national sample of US teenagers combined with a complementary sample of US adults are used to examine the effects of teenage childbearing on health behaviors by comparing female siblings in both the teenage sample and a sample of adults. Additionally, miscarriage information available in the teenage sample is used to form comparison groups. Unlike previous estimates of the effects of teenage childbearing on health behaviors, the results using these US samples and research designs suggest that teenage childbearing has negligible effects on several measures of unhealthy behaviors for mothers and may be protective for drug use and binge drinking.     

The effects of teenage childbearing on the short- and long-term health behaviors of mothers

A national sample of US teenagers combined with a complementary sample of US adults are used to examine the effects of teenage childbearing on health behaviors by comparing female siblings in both the teenage sample and a sample of adults. Additionally, miscarriage information available in the teenage sample is used to form comparison groups. Unlike previous estimates of the effects of teenage childbearing on health behaviors, the results using these US samples and research designs suggest that teenage childbearing has negligible effects on several measures of unhealthy behaviors for mothers and may be protective for drug use and binge drinking.     

The impact of international migration upon the timing of marriage and childbearing

Experiences of 1500 native-born Australians and 1000 foreign-born immigrants to Australia, surveyed in Melbourne in 1971, reveal that immigration delayed marriage for migrants arriving between age 15 and marriage, and delayed first, second, third and fourth births for immigrants arriving during each birth interval. This migration effect was clearly finite in its influence, affecting only proximate vital events rather than persisting through several successive events. The temporary nature of the migration effect highlights the adaptability of international migrants.     

The impact of economic resources on premarital childbearing and subsequent marriage among young American women

This paper extends previous work on premarital childbearing by modeling both the entry rates and the exit rates of unwed motherhood among young American women. In particular, I investigate the impact of economic resources on the likelihood of experiencing a premarital birth and then of subsequent marriage. Using a multiple-destination, multiple-spell hazard regression model and a microsimulation analysis, I analyze the accumulating effects of various economic variables. The results show that the economic resources are indeed important both for premarital childbearing and for subsequent marriage. However, the simulations show that large changes in these economic variables do not necessarily translate into large changes in nonmarital childbearing.     

The impact of “parent care” on female labor supply decisions

Data from the 1986–1988 Survey of Income and Program Participation panels were used to analyze how informal-caregiving of disabled elderly parents affected female labor supply. Instrumental variables analyses suggested that coresidence with a disabled parent leads to a large, significant reduction in work hours, due primarily to withdrawal from the labor force. Although the impact of nonhousehold member caregiving was insignificant, evidence of an effect was stronger when commitment of caregiving time was greater. Projections of female labor force participation rates should account for potential increases in caregiving demand due to the aging of the U.S. population.     

The fertility impact of changes in the timing of childbearing in the developing world

This study examines the role of tempo effects in the fertility declines of less developed countries. These effects temporarily inflate the total fertility of a population during periods when the age at childbearing declines and deflate it when childbearing is postponed. An analysis of data from the World Fertility Surveys and the Demographic and Health Surveys demonstrates that fertility trends observed in many less developed countries are likely to be distorted by changes in the timing of childbearing. In most countries women are delaying childbearing, which implies that observed fertility is lower than it would have been without tempo changes. This pattern is most clearly documented in Taiwan, where accurate birth statistics from a vital registration system make it possible to estimate the tempo components of fertility annually from 1978 to 1993. The small but unexpected rise in the total fertility of Colombia in the early 1990s is attributed to a decline in the negative tempo distortion that prevailed in the 1980s. Similar interruptions of ongoing fertility declines may occur in the future in other countries when existing negative tempo effects are removed.     

Stepfamily fertility in contemporary Sweden: The impact of childbearing before the current union

We focus on the fertility of Swedish men and women who lived in a consensual or marital union in the 1970s and 1980s, and where at least one of the partners had children before they entered that union. Couples without any children before the current union were included for contrast. We find clear evidence that couples wanted a shared biological child, essentially regardless of how many children (if any) they had before their current union. The shared child seems to have served to demonstrate commitment to the union, as did its conversion into a formal marriage. We have not found much support for the hypothesis that our respondents sought to enter parenthood to attain adult status. A second birth might have been valued because it provided a sibling for the first child -- a half-sibling acting as a substitute for a full sibling -- but our evidence for such eåects is contradictory. Our analysis makes it very clear that parity progression depends on whose parity we consider.     

The effect of maternal employment on teenage childbearing

This paper estimates the effect of a mothers employment on her teenage daughters likelihood of birth. Using data from the United States, the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988, the author finds that teenagers with working mothers who attend relatively wealthy schools are more likely (77%) to have a birth compared to teens who attend similar schools but have non-working mothers. In contrast, teenagers with working mothers who attend relatively poor schools are less likely (18%) to have a birth compared to teens who attend similar schools but have non-working mothers.I am indebted to Marcia Carlson, Thomas DeLeire, Angela Fertig, Brian Jacob, Darren Lubotsky, Scott Lynch, Susan Mayer, Sara McLanahan, Robert Michael, German Rodriguez, seminar participants at Princeton University and The University of Chicago, and two anonymous referees for insightful suggestions made on earlier versions of this paper. I also gratefully acknowledge financial support from a Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research Graduate Fellowship, a Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation Graduate Fellowship, the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University, and the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, which is supported by center grant 5 P30 HD32030 from the NICHD. Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang.     

The effect of stepchildren on childbearing intentions and births

This article reports on a study of the effect of stepchildren (children from previous unions) on couples' fertility intentions and childbearing behavior using longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The results indicated that stepchildren negatively affect childbearing intentions and childbearing risks. Intentions to have a child are weakened by one's own previous biological children and the previous biological children of one's current spouse or partner. This effect varies by the parenting configuration of the couple and gender of the respondent. Among couples with stepchildren, intentions remain high until each partner has had a biological child. Unlike women, men's previous biological children do not affect their intentions of having a child. Stepchildren exert a weak negative effect on couples' childbearing risks, and this effect is mediated by the couples' childbearing intentions. The findings suggest that stepchildren should be incorporated into future models of fertility.     

The effects of teenage fertility on young adult childbearing

Numerous studies of fertility behavior find that an early age at first birth increases the rate of subsequent childbearing. Typically, however, these studies do not account for the possibility of serial correlation in the unobserved determinants of fertility. Using 1979–1992 individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this paper employs the Method of Simulated Moments to estimate panel probit models of annual birth outcomes. The panel probit models account for several alternative sources of serial correlation. Estimation reveals that once serial correlation is taken into account, the subsequent fertility effects of early childbearing are either statistically eliminated or reversed. JEL classification: J13 Received March 3, 1995 / Accepted February 23, 1996     

The effects of teenage childbearing on adult soft skills development

Research examining impacts of teenage childbearing on economic and social outcomes have focused on completed schooling and labor force outcomes. In this paper, we examine outcomes that have remained largely unexplored, soft skills and personality. We use Add Health data to construct relevant controls for teenage mothers and explore a set of measures that proxy for what is usually deemed in economics as “non-cognitive” or “soft skill” traits. We find that teenage childbearing increases impulsivity, a trait that has been found to have negative effects on a large set of outcomes and has a negative effect on other personality traits perceived as positive, such as openness to experiences. Our results remain consistent through a set of robustness checks, and we interpret our findings to suggest that adolescence may be a sensitive period for the development of soft skills and that childbearing may interrupt this process.     

The influence of nonmarital childbearing on the formation of first marriages

We document a negative association between nonmarital childbearing and the subsequent likelihood of first marriage in the United States, controlling for a variety of potentially confounding influences. Nonmarital childbearing does not appear to be driven by low expectations of future marriage. Rather, it tends to be an unexpected and unwanted event, whose effects on a woman’s subsequent likelihood of first marriage are negative on balance. We find that women who bear a child outside marriage and who receive welfare have a particularly low probability of marrying subsequently, although there is no evidence that AFDC recipients have lower expectations of marriage. In addition, we find no evidence that stigma associated with nonmarital childbearing plays an important role in this process or that the demands of children significantly reduce unmarried mothers’ time for marriage market activities.     

The educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation in Europe

Nearly every European Country has experienced some increase in nonmarital childbearing, largely due to increasing births within cohabitation. Relatively few studies in Europe, however, investigate the educational gradient of childbearing within cohabitation or how it changed over time. Using retrospective union and fertility histories, we employ competing risk hazard models to examine the educational gradient of childbearing in cohabitation in eight countries across europe. In all countries studied, birth risks within cohabitation demonstrated a negative educational gradient. When directly comparing cohabiting fertility with marital fertility, the negative educational gradient persists in all countries except Italy, although differences were not significant in Austria, France, and West Germany. To explain these findings, we present an alternative explanation for the increase in childbearing within cohabitation that goes beyond the explanation of the Second Demographic Transition and provides a new interpretation of the underlying mechanisms that may influence childbearing within cohabitation.     

The effects of breastfeeding and pace of childbearing on mortality at early ages

The effects of the pace of childbearing and breastfeeding practices on infant mortality have rarely been considered together. In this paper, we design and use a set of methodological tools to test a variety of hypotheses postulating the effects of breastfeeding and pace of childbearing on mortality in infancy and early childhood, the mechanisms through which those effects operate, and the contingencies that strengthen or weaken them. The strong effects of both length of breastfeeding and the pace of childbearing on the risks of child death suggest that neither of them exerts an impact on mortality totally mediated by the other. Social and demographic factors (such as age of child, education of mother, and region of residence) also condition the impact of breastfeeding and pace of childbearing on mortality.     

The effects of gender control on fertility and children's consumption

Effects of sex preference on investments in children‘s human capital, bequests and fertility are studied, with and without sex selection, in a model based on parental altruism. Both pure sex preference, a feature of the parental utility function, and indirect preference, which arises from gender-related differences in earnings opportunities, are examined. When there is no gender control the impact of pure sex preference is seen in smaller consumption for daughters than for sons. However, when gender control is exerted, sex preference raises the sex ratio and it is possible that sisters may, on average, consume no less than their more numerous brothers. In an example of the model with specific functional forms, parents who practise gender control have larger families than if sex selection techniques were unavailable. The effect is magnified if sons‘ earnings opportunities are better than daughters‘. JEL classification: D11, J13, J16 Received August 31, 1995 / Accepted May 2, 1996