Marriage markets and nonmarital fertility in the United States

We merge census microdata with vital statistics data to examine the effect of women's marriage opportunities on nonmarital fertility rates and ratios across 75 U.S. metropolitan areas. Measures of the quantity and "quality" of marriageable men simultaneously specific for women's age, race, education, and place of residence reveal especially poor marriage prospects for highly educated black women. The effect of mate availability on nonmarital fertility is generally modest. Among white women, marriage opportunities are associated inversely with the nonmarital fertility rate, perhaps reflecting an increased likelihood that a premarital conception will be legitimated. Marriage opportunities also reduce nonmarital fertility ratios for young black and white women. The nonmarital fertility rate is lower among women whose marriage pool includes a large percentage of nonemployed males. Only a small proportion of the racial difference in nonmarital fertility appears attributable to differences in the marriage markets of black and of white women.     

Cointegration modeling of fertility in the United States

This paper presents estimates of a multiple time series model of fertility, female labor force participation, women's wages, and the relative cohort size of younger to older adult males. Cointegration methods permit modeling of these nonstationary variables, yielding estimates of the long-run relation among the variables, and the dynamic response of each variable to displacements from the steady state. The estimated steady state relation between fertility and the other variables is consistent with economic models of fertility, with fertility negatively related to female wages and male relative cohort size. Fertility responds to cohort size in a manner that is consistent with Easterlin's relative income model of household behavior. Finally, both female labor market variables adjust significantly to departures from the steady state relation, implying that they cannot be treated as exogenous in time series models of fertility.     

Religion and fertility in the United States: New patterns

In the United States, the baby boom-era pattern of high Catholic and low Protestant fertility has ended. Among non-Hispanic whites in the 1980s, Catholic total fertility rates (TFRs) were about one-quarter of a child lower than Protestant rates (1.64 vs. 1.91). Most of the Protestant-Catholic difference is related to later and less frequent marriage among Catholics. Future research on the demography of religious groups should focus on explaining the delayed marriage pattern of Catholics, the high fertility of Mormons and frequently attending Protestants, and the very low fertility of those with no religious affiliation.     

Regional-sub-cultural explanations of black fertility in the United States

Summary This paper re-examines the relevance of the hypothesis concerning the Southern sub-culture and black fertility in the United States. According to zero-order correlation analysis, Southern-born blacks show higher fertility than those born in other regions. But a dummy-variable regression technique applied to the data from the 1970 public-use sample indicates that the Southern origin - independent of other factors-is not different from other regions. Southern birth has the effect of increasing black fertility, but much less so than birth in the North Central region. Southern blacks show higher fertility because of their lower socio-economic background. It is concluded that geographical regions in the United States have little or no cultural meaning in explaining reproductive behaviour.     

Nonmarital cohabitation and fertility in the United States and Western Europe

The increasing popularity of nonmarital cohabitation and a decline in marriage rates in the United States and Western Europe has led to a growing research interest in cohabitation without marriage and its relationship to traditional marriage. This article examines the evidence on the prevalence of cohabitation and the characteristics of cohabitants, and focuses on the childbearing behavior of cohabiting couples who are not married. The evidence to date suggests that in Denmark and Sweden cohabitation is widespread, especially among young people, and childbearing within cohabitational unions is relatively common. In the rest of Western Europe and in the United States, cohabitation is less common and fertility is less frequent. Fertility will be affected to the extent that couples delay having children until they are married. Policy and law concerning cohabitants and their children are changing rapidly. Most of these changes have resulted in a blurring of the distinctions between married and unmarried couples and between legitimate and illegitimate children.     

The economic explanation of fertility changes in the United States

Abstract It is widely assumed that fertility varies positively with economic conditions. Actually this assumption receives little support from the historical record. For a century before 1930 fertility declined while the economy expanded and real incomes rose. Then for nearly three decades fertility and incomes fell and rose together. Since 1960 they have again moved in opposite directions. Clearly, no simple generalization about their relation will hold water. More sophisticated explanations are based on relative rather than absolute incomes. Banks suggested that the downturn in English fertility in the 1870's might have occurred because standards of middle-class consumption rose faster than middle-class incomes, but he found the evidence inconclusive. To reconcile the post-war baby boom in the United States with earlier experience, Easterlin has argued that fertility is determined by the relationship between the income of couples in their twenties and the income of their parents ten to fifteen years earlier. Among the weaknesses of this theory as applied to U.S. experience are its failure to explain the sharp drop in fertility, including that of native white urban women, in the 1920's; the fact that fertility rose most in the baby boom at the higher socio-economic levels where incomes rose least; and the sharp decline of fertility after 1962 in spite of the favourable trend of incomes, including those of younger people. The broad conclusion is that while couples no doubt do consider income, employment opportunities, etc. in deciding how many children to have, such considerations have had a relatively minor influence on changes in fertility, which for the most part have been the result of changes in attitudes. Even the post-war baby boom was a result not only of higher incomes and full employment but also of a shift in attitudes toward family size, particularly among the better-educated, economically better-off sections of society.     

Language usage and fertility in the Mexican-origin population of the United States

This article examines the effects of English proficiency and female education on cumulative and recent fertility within the Mexican-origin population in the U.S. To ascertain whether the cultural or the human capital aspects of linguistic variables have the greater salience for fertility behavior, fertility patterns of bilingual women are compared with those of monolingual women speaking English or Spanish. Using the 1980 U.S. Census 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample for ever-married Mexican-origin women aged 15-44, we find that for almost all age cohorts, the effects of English proficiency are negative and increase with rising education. The strength of the interaction is greater in younger age groups. Greater English proficiency is also associated with a more negative impact of education for native- than foreign-born women. Overall, the influence of "opportunity cost," as opposed to cultural factors, is more important in shaping the fertility behavior of these women.     

The fertility contribution of Mexican immigration to the United States

Crucial to the long-term contribution of immigration to a receiving country's population is the extent to which the immigrants reproduce themselves in subsequent, native-born generations. Using conventional projection methodologies, this fertility contribution may be poorly estimated primarily because of problems in projecting the number of immigrants who are at risk of childbearing. We propose an alternative method that obviates the need to project the number of immigrants by using the full sending-country birth cohort as the risk group to project their receiving-country childbearing. This "sending-country birth cohort" method is found to perform dramatically better than conventional methods when projecting to 1999 from base years both before and after the large increase in inflows of Mexican immigrants to the United States in the late 1980s. Projecting forward from 1999, we estimate a cumulative contribution of Mexican immigrant fertility from the 1980s to 2040 of 36 million births, including 25% to 50% more births after 1995 than are projected using conventional methods.     

Parity-specific fertility intentions and uncertainty: the United States, 1970 to 1976

A theoretical and analytic model of fertility intentions is proposed which treats “don’t know” responses and other uncertain responses as distinct from more firm intentions. Methodologically, these analyses show that “don’t know” responses need not be treated as missing data, but instead are both valid and meaningful responses. Furthermore, eliminating these uncertain respondents would have the negative effects of distorting across survey comparisons in intentions due to shifts in aggregate uncertainty, reducing the likelihood of accurately detecting shifts in fertility intentions, and lessening the representatives of the sample analyzed. Substantively, in conjunction with Morgan (1981), these results show that the sharp 1965–76 decline in the likelihood of intending more births at parities 2 through 5 occurred as women halted childbearing at minimal acceptable levels and postponed further childbearing. With time (or age), this delayed fertility became fertility about which the respondent was uncertain and, finally, fertility foregone. Since 1970, similar shifts are observed at parities 0 and 1, perhaps foreshadowing an increase in voluntary childlessness and one-child families.     

Effect on unwanted fertility of extending physician-administered birth control in the United States

A goal of publicly subsidized family planning programs in the United States is to prevent unwanted births, and the primary means being used to achieve this goal is to increase coverage with physician-administered contraception, with priority being given to persons from low-income families. We analyzed data from families living in low-income neighborhoods to determine whether that means would contribute to that goal, and if so, how much unwanted fertility might be decreased through increased coverage with physician-administered methods.The results indicate that increased coverage with those methods would decrease unwanted fertility by 80 percent (79 percent among blacks, 83 percent among whites). Increasing the ratio of sterilization to pill and IUD makes the effect of the increased coverage even more dramatic.     

Religion and fertility in the United States: The importance of marriage patterns and hispanic origin

The marital fertility of white Catholic wives in the United States was higher than that of non-Catholic wives in 1977–1981, but when Hispanics were excluded, the differential disappeared; therefore, the Catholic-non-Catholic differential in recent years was due entirely to the higher fertility of Hispanic Catholics. The Total Fertility Rates (TFR) of Catholics were slightly lower in 1977–1981 than those for white Protestants, primarily because Catholic women tend to marry later than Protestant women. This finding was confirmed by multivariate analysis of data on children ever born. We examine some additional data and various theories to speculate on whether these patterns will last.     

Recent net alien immigration to the United States: Its impact on population growth and native fertility

Estimates of the size and structure of recent alien immigration to the United States are made. Substituting these revised estimates in the Series II projections of the U.S. Bureau of the Census implies a future U.S. population smaller than that implied by the Census Bureau’s estimates of immigration. The analysis of Coale (1972)—which calculates the decline in native-born fertility required to accommodate immigration and, at the same time, maintain a stationary population—is replicated, using both the Census Bureau’s estimates and the revised estimates reported here. The revised estimates indicate a smaller reduction in native fertility and a smaller ultimate size of the stationary population than are implied by the Census Bureau’s immigration estimates. The importance of age structure in all of these calculations is demonstrated.     

American fertility in transition: New estimates of birth rates in the United States, 1900–1910

This article presents new estimates of age-specific overall and marital fertility rates for the entire United States for the period 1900-1910. The estimation techniques are the two-census parity increment method and the own-children method. The data sources are the 1900 census public use sample and tabulations of 1910 census fertility data published with the 1940 census. Estimates are made for the total population, whites, native-born whites, foreign-born whites, and blacks. Low age-specific marital fertility at younger ages is consistent with a view of a distinctive American fertility pattern at this time.     

Foreign-born professionals in the United States

This paper is an abridged version of a longer study by the same name published by the Center for Immigration Studies, 1815 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006.     

Delayed childbearing in the United States

This article analyzes the phenomenon of delayed childbearing in the United States. It begins by exploring problems associated with the definition and measurement of delayed childbearing. Existing empirical evidence of the phenomenon is reviewed and some new evidence is presented. A general theoretical framework for analyzing delayed childbearing is outlined and discussed in relation to existing theories. The article also provides a critical substantive and methodological review of evidence on the correlates and implications of delayed childbearing. Finally, public and private policy-related aspects of delayed childbearing are considered.     

Homicide trends in the United States

Unlike most other causes of death, homicide has been increasing in the United States, especially since the mid-1960s. Its impact is greatest among nonwhite men. The elimination of homicide would add approximately one and one-half years to their life span. This analysis examines trends and differentials using vital statistics data about homicide victims. A decomposition of components of change reveals that almost all of the rise in homicide mortality among nonwhites and a substantial fraction of the rise among whites results from the increasing use of firearms to kill people.     

Cigarette smoking and widowhood in the United States

Abstract Extract In the United States, for newly married couples with husband aged 23 and wife 21 who never divorce or re-marry after death of spouse, expectation of married life increased by 10·1 years between 1910 and 1965. Expectation of widowed life decreased by 3·2 years for husbands, but, despite large mortality declines for both sexes, increased by 1·8 years for wives. These and related data are shown in Table 1.     

Medicaid Expansions and Fertility in the United States

Beginning in the mid-1980s and extending through the early to mid-1990s, a substantial number of women and children in the United States gained eligibility for Medicaid through a series of income-based expansions. Using natality data from the National Center for Health Statistics, we estimate fertility responses to these eligibility expansions. We follow Currie and Gruber (2001) and measure changes in state Medicaid-eligibility policy by simulating the fraction of a standard population that would qualify for benefits in different states and different time periods. From 1985 to 1996, the fraction of women aged 15–44 who were eligible for Medicaid coverage for a pregnancy increased more than 20 percentage points. When we use a state and year fixed-effects model with a limited set of covariates, our estimates indicate that fertility increases in response to Medicaid expansions. However, after we include fixed effects for demographic characteristics, the estimated relationship diminishes substantially in size and is no longer statistically significant. We conclude that there is no robust relationship between Medicaid expansions and fertility.     

Seasonal fertility cycles in rural Egypt: Behavioral and biological linkages

The annual birth cycle in rural Egypt peaks in December and has two distinguishable minima in June and September. This pattern bears a striking inverse resemblance to the seasonal movements of employment and wages. Infant and child mortality and marriage also display stable, though different seasonal patterns. The paper explores whether the correlation between labor demand, mortality events and fertility reflect some causal behavioral relationship. It is shown that the probability of a birth is lower in months with high opportunity cost of time. Direct replacement is a significant phenomenon in rural Egypt and it occurs fairly quickly.