Effects of the timing of marriage and first birth of the spacing of subsequent births

Analyzing data from a fifteen-year follow-up survey of high school students originally surveyed in 1957–58 and resurveyed in 1973–74, this paper examines the effects of the timing of marriage and first birth on subsequent child spacing, holding constant the effects of other variables that may be sources of spuriousness. The results suggest that age at first marriage has a causal effect on the occurrence of a short first birth interval and that age at first marriage and premarital pregnancy interact in their effect on the occurrence of a short second birth interval. Age at first marriage has no causal effect on the spacing of the second birth for those whose first child was maritally conceived. The spacing of the first birth, however, appears to have a causal effect on the spacing of the second.     

Writing the names: Marriage style,living arrangements,and first birth interval in a Nepali society

Using data from a Nepali population, this analysis argues that marriage style and postmarital living arrangements affect coital frequency to produce variations in the timing of first birth after marriage. Event history analysis of the first birth interval for 149 women suggests that women’s autonomy in marriage decisions and marriage to cross-cousins accelerate the pace of entry into first birth. Extended-household residence with reduced natal kin contact, on the other hand, significantly lengthens the first birth interval. These findings are consistent with previous arguments in the literature while offering new evidence for the impact of extended-family residence on fertility.     

The temporal relationship of marriage,conception, and birth in Massachusetts

An investigation into the timing of first births in relationship to the date of marriage in Massachusetts confirmed the finding of previous national and local birth timing studies that first births likely to have been conceived before the marriage of their parents constitute a substantial proportion of all first births. The differential frequency of premaritally conceived births among various subgroups appeared to account for the variation noted in the overall timing patterns of first births after marriage. Data were gathered through linkage of certificates of birth of a sample of legitimate first children with the marriage record of their parents. Analysis of the marriage-first birth interval by maternal age and race, type of marriage ceremony, and occupation of the bride and groom were conducted and comparisons with previously published data were made. Separate consideration was given to the frequency and characteristics of those births likely to be premaritally conceived and those likely to have been conceived after the wedding.     

The family formation process among U.S. marriage cohorts

The family formation process is viewed as the progression of women through first marriage, first, subsequent, and last births and is examined for differential patterns of timing in 1930–1969 marriage cohorts. Based on the childbearing histories of approximately 17,000 white women once and still married, extracted from the June 1975 Current Population Survey, the study uses a dynamic model to show the varying importance across cohorts of the first birth interval as an important indicator of the total time spent in childbearing, social background effects in differentiating the timing of the first two births, and of prior birth transitions as affecting subsequent ones.     

The construction of the fertility model of variable parity from family planning practice]

Understanding the changing patterns of age specific fertility under the planning system is essential for building a fertility model which reflects birth control policy implementation in China. In building a Parity Variable Fertility Model, 4 basic elements are to be considered: 1) psychosocial, and physiological variables, 2) patterns of the total fertility rate and age-specific fertility rate, 3) socioeconomic development, and 4) distribution of parity-specific fertility. THe natural fertility of women is 17, calculated from a 309-years childbearing period, with 17% of non-susceptible time. In China, about 86% of natural fertility is suppressed by various factors. In this model, the following variables are included: 1) The first marriage ratio, which is the proportion of women in each age group which enters into a first marriage. The range and spread of this ratio is closely associated with the first birth. 2) The first birth ratio, which is the proportion of a marriage cohort to have a first birth each year. 3) the birth interval, which determines the distribution of second births. 4) Regulation coefficient B, which represents birth control regulations which approximately determine the number of second-parity or higher order births. The difference between the fertility level generated from the Parity Variable Fertility Model and reality depends on the implementation of birth control program, the assumptions on regulation coefficients, and changes in social and cultural factors. The model is easy to use, especially for areas where the marriage and fertility records of women of child-bearing are well kept.     

Interrelationships between fertility and marital dissolution: Results of a simultaneous logit model

Previous studies have failed to examine (a) the simultaneity of decisions to bear children and to dissolve a marriage and (b) the effects of the childbearing in the period just before dissolution on the likelihood of disruption. We attempted to resolve both problems by developing a simultaneous logit model of the interrelationship between the probability of separation and of having a birth during this period (when dissolution presumably is being considered). The model was estimated at successive durations of first marriage, using data for white women in the 1970 National Fertility Survey. The results indicate that childbearing patterns— number of children and age of youngest child at the beginning of the marital interval being studied and fertility during the interval—did not influence the likelihood of separation in simple or consistent ways over the marital life course, nor did marital strife (as indicated by separation) seem to affect childbearing throughout marriage.     

Schooling,marriage, and age at first birth in Madagascar

The low school attainment, early marriage, and low age at first birth of females are major policy concerns in less developed countries. This study jointly estimated the determinants of educational attainment, marriage age, and age at first birth among females aged 12–25 in Madagascar, explicitly accounting for the endogeneities that arose from modelling these related outcomes simultaneously. An additional year of schooling results in a delay to marriage of 1.5?years and marrying 1?year later delays age at first birth by 0.5?years. Parents’ education and wealth also have important effects on schooling, marriage, and age at first birth, with a woman's first birth being delayed by 0.75?years if her mother had 4 additional years of schooling. Overall, our results provide rigorous evidence for the critical role of education—both individual women's own and that of their parents—in delaying the marriage and fertility of young women.     

Age at marriage and timing of the first birth

Summary An attempt has been made to measure the effect of age at marriage of brides on the timing of the first birth. In Australian vital statistics, first nuptial confinements have been tabulated by age of mothers and by single years of marriage duration in single months for the first two years and by single years for all other durations since 1916. A simple technique has been used to link such data with marriage cohorts. The study briefly reviews the prevailing patterns of the timing of first births by mothers' age at marriage and changes in this pattern since the marriages of the 1925/9 period. The analysis shows that after a period of relative stability of family formation patterns in the 1950s and early 1960s, women married in the late 1960s started postponing the first birth beyond the first two years of marriage. It is suggested that a fraction of the decline in total births recorded in Australia since 1972 can be attributed to the postponement of first nuptial confinements by women married in the late 1960s and early 1970s.     

Social, cultural, and economic determinants of age at birth of first child in Peninsular Malaysia

Summary In order to unravel the complex set of the determinants of fertility, we suggest that the child-bearing process be separated into a sequence of events and intervals. As the first step in the child-bearing process, age at first birth is a critical variable. Using data from the 1966-67 West Malaysia Family Survey, we formulate and test a model of the cultural, social and economic determinants of the timing of first birth among a sample of mothers, aged 30-44. Social origins, measured by the woman's father's occupation and the woman's birthplace are not important determinants, but education, early work experience, and ethnicity exercise very strong effects on the age at first birth. Age at first marriage mediates much of the effect of background variables, which suggest that there is little use of contraception to plan the first birth interval. The strong effect of ethnicity is consistent with a cultural interpretation, but important qualifications are noted.     

Proximate determinants of Philippine fertility: 1983 levels and patterns

Data from the 1983 National Demographic Survey are used to analyze the proximate determinants of Philippine fertility in each of the 3 stages of family formation and to identify all of the direct and indirect factors affecting fertility levels and trends. 10,843 ever-married women and 12,771 children were included. The analysis pertains first to the starting patterns of family formation, the age at first birth, and the proximate determinants (age at menarche, age at first marriage/union, conception before first birth, fetal wastage first birth, interval between first marriage and first birth). Further analysis examines birth spacing patterns including the postpartum nonsusceptible period, the exposure interval and stopping patterns. Almost all births occur within marriage, and childbearing begins late at 22.5 years. However, 15.4% of first births are conceived premaritally. The mean age at first birth increases from younger to older cohorts. Urban women were slightly older (23.0 years) at the birth of their first child. Those with education below the 4th grade had first births 3.5 years earlier. Contraceptive use was low at 1.8% before first birth. Younger cohorts were more likely to use birth control and urban wives were more likely to use it than rural wives. 6.4% reported a first pregnancy ending in nonlive births, which were primarily spontaneous abortions (5.2%), stillbirths (1.0%), and induced abortions (.2%). 5.8% report never having been pregnant and 1.1% never having given birth to a live-born child. 20.4% were childless between the ages of 15-24 years, and 4.6% between 25-34 years. Childlessness was slightly higher among urban women (7.1%) than rural women (6.7%). A decreasing age at menarche has appeared; i.e., 13.6 years for the cohort 15-24 years, and 14.0 for the oldest cohort. By age 15, 82.9% had begun menstruating. The mean age at marriage is early at 20.7 years, and older cohorts tended to marry later at 21.4 years. Urban women marry a year later (21.4 years) than rural women. Lower educated women marry 4 years earlier. The mean length between first marriage and first birth was 18.4 months. In the younger cohorts, spacing patterns are shorter. Postpartum susceptibility is short. Return to sexual relations after a birth occurred at 2.8 months. The exposure time required to conceive is fairly long at 16.6 months and is attributed to contraceptive use, since coital frequency is high and temporary separation is infrequent. The average age at last birth is late at 37.6 years.     

A modification of a continuous time model for first conception

The interval between marriage and the first conception leading to a live birth plays an important role in the determination of fertility components. Several probability models (Potter and Parker, 1964; Singh, 1961, 1964, 1967) based on varying sets of assumptions relating to this interval have been propounded in the recent past. All of them are based on the assumption that the females under study are susceptible to conception at the time of marriage. However, in certain situations, where some of the females already pregnant at the time of marriage report to have conceived within a short interval following marriage, this condition is not satisfied and these models become unsuitable. A probability distribution which is an inflated form of the continuous model proposed by Singh, for the time of the first conception leading to a live birth, is presented in this paper. It describes reasonably well the data on first conception times in the context of premarital conceptions. Simple expressions for the maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters involved in the model are obtained and a method for finding the asymptotic covariance matrix of the estimators is outlined. The model is applied to four sets of data.     

流动人口的生育意愿与生育行为差异研究

文章利用中国人民大学人口与发展研究中心于2009年在北京朝阳区、广东东莞市和浙江诸暨市组织进行的流动人口调查数据,分析了流动人口的生育意愿与生育行为之间的关系。研究发现,流动人口中既存在生育意愿与生育行为悖离的一面又有一致的一面,在4个维度上均有所表现,在时间、间隔和性别上二者更多的表现为悖离,在数量上更多的表现为一致。研究还发现,年龄、初婚年龄、初育年龄、受教育程度、职业角色、已有孩子的性别结构等对生育意愿与生育行为的悖离有显著影响。     

A comparison of the probability of the dissolution of first and second marriages

This paper applies the techniques of multiple decrement life tables to marriage histories collected as part of the 1973 National Survey of Family Growth, in an attempt to examine differences in pattern and level of marriage dissolution by marriage order. The paper considers the process of marriage dissolution in two stages—marriage to separation and separation to divorce—in addition to considering the composite of these two, marriage to divorce. Second marriages are more likely to remain intact only for blacks. For all subgroups of whites, second marriages are either as likely or more likely to dissolve than first marriages. For both first and second marriages, blacks are considerably less likely to obtain a divorce after separation.     

Multivariate analysis of parity progression—based measures of the total fertility rate and its components

This article describes a methodology for applying a discrete-time survival model—the complementary log-log model—to estimate effects of socioeconomic variables on (1) the total fertility rate and its components and (2) trends in the total fertility rate and its components. For the methodology to be applicable, the total fertility rate (TFR) must be calculated from parity progression ratios (PPRs). The components of the TFR are PPRs, the total marital fertility rate (TMFR), and the TFR itself as measures of the quantum of fertility, and mean and median ages at first marriage and mean and median closed birth intervals by birth order as measures of the tempo or timing of fertility. The focus is on effects of predictor variables on these measures rather than on coefficients, which are often difficult to interpret in the complex models that are considered. The methodology is applicable to both period and cohort data. It is illustrated by application to data from the 1993, 1998, and 2003 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in the Philippines.     

Forced Marriage and Birth Outcomes

We study the impact of marriages resulting from bride kidnapping on infant birth weight. Bride kidnapping—a form of forced marriage—implies that women are abducted by men and have little choice other than to marry their kidnappers. Given this lack of choice over the spouse, we expect adverse consequences for women in such marriages. Remarkable survey data from the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan enable exploration of differential birth outcomes for women in kidnap-based and other types of marriage using both OLS and IV estimation. We find that children born to mothers in kidnap-based marriages have lower birth weight compared with children born to other mothers. The largest difference is between kidnap-based and arranged marriages: the magnitude of the birth weight loss is in the range of 2 % to 6 % of average birth weight. Our finding is one of the first statistically sound estimates of the impact of forced marriage and implies not only adverse consequences for the women involved but potentially also for their children.     

Bias in Age at Marriage in Family Reconstitutions: Evidence from French-Canadian Data

Age-at-marriage estimates from family reconstitutions may be biased downward when they are based only on marriages of people who continue to live in their parish of birth, because when the probability of migrating rises with age, younger people are selected in preference to older ones. Micro-simulations show that the bias can have dramatic effects. In this paper French-Canadian data are used to investigate the importance of the bias and to verify empirically the micro-simulation results. Although a high proportion of people moved between birth and marriage, the bias had virtually no effect, given the specific characteristics of the migrations. If one cannot avoid discussing the timing of migration before marriage, when measuring age at first marriage using only data on “stayers”, it is just possible that in most settings, it is the same for those who lived in their parish of birth, and those who had moved.     

Marital decision-making and the timing of first birth in rural China before the 1990s

Using a sample of couples drawn from the three provinces of Guangdong, Shandong, and Shaanxi, we investigated whether couples’ increasing freedom to choose whom to marry influenced the timing of first birth in rural China during the four decades before the 1990s. The shortening of first-birth intervals in the period is found to be associated with the shift from arranged to free-choice marriages. The association is attributed largely to increased intimacy and coital frequency after marriage together with postponement of age at first marriage.     

Marital decision-making and the timing of first birth in rural China before the 1990s

Using a sample of couples drawn from the three provinces of Guangdong, Shandong, and Shaanxi, we investigated whether couples' increasing freedom to choose whom to marry influenced the timing of first birth in rural China during the four decades before the 1990s. The shortening of first-birth intervals in the period is found to be associated with the shift from arranged to free-choice marriages. The association is attributed largely to increased intimacy and coital frequency after marriage together with postponement of age at first marriage.     

Entering first union: the choice between cohabitation and marriage among women in Italy and Spain

While in Spain and Italy cohabitation has not acquired the same role that it has had in Northern Europe, in both of these Mediterranean countries cohabitation is no longer a marginal phenomenon. Moreover, the nature of cohabiting couples is diverse. According to the most recent FFS data, first cohabitations constitute a temporary arrangement that usually ends in the formalization of the union (marriage), and within 5 years 28.9 % of first cohabitations in Spain and 51.7 % in Italy were transformed into marriages. Within a Western context of changes in union formation patterns, the study of the choice between marriage and cohabitation as first union is of great significance. Is it possible to identify a shared pattern of union formation in Mediterranean countries like Italy and Spain? The purpose of this paper is to examine the choice between cohabitation and marriage as first union (timing, incidence and determinants) using a comparative life course approach. For the analysis of the timing and prevalence, cumulative incidence curves are calculated by birth cohorts and regions; while two semiparametric competing-risks models are estimated for the determinants of first partnership formation (one for each country), considering birth cohort, parental separation, educational attainment, employment status, age at leaving the parental home and birth of a child (the last three time-varying) as independent variables.     

Does It Matter What She Wants? The Role of Individual Preferences Against Unmarried Motherhood in Young Women’s Likelihood of a Nonmarital First Birth

Most young people in the United States express the desire to marry. Norms at all socioeconomic levels posit marriage as the optimal context for childbearing. At the same time, nonmarital fertility accounts for approximately 40 % of U.S. births, experienced disproportionately by women with educational attainment less than a bachelor’s degree. Research has shown that women’s intentions for the number and timing of children and couples’ intent to marry are strong predictors of realized fertility and marriage. The present study investigates whether U.S. young women’s preferences about nonmarital fertility, as stated before childbearing begins, predict their likelihood of having a nonmarital first birth. I track marriage and fertility histories through ages 24–30 of women asked at ages 11–16 whether they would consider unmarried childbearing. One-quarter of women who responded “no” in fact had a nonmarital birth by age 24–30. The ability of women and their partners to access material resources in adulthood were, as expected, the strongest predictors of the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Nonetheless, I find that women who said they would not consider nonmarital childbearing had substantially higher hazards of fertility postponement and especially of marital fertility, even after controlling for race/ethnicity, mother’s educational attainment, family of origin intactness, self-efficacy and planning ability, perceived future prospects, and markers of own educational attainment and work experience into early adulthood.