A joint model of marital childbearing and marital disruption

Married couples with children appear to be less likely to end their marriages than childless couples, especially when the children are young. Although this suggests that children affect the chances that their parents will divorce, the process may not be so simple: the chances that the marriage will last also may affect couples’ willingness to make the commitment to the marriage implied by having children. This paper uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to test the hypothesis that the risk of disruption faced by a married woman affects the chances that she will conceive and bear a child. The model used takes into account the simultaneous relationships between marital dissolution and marital fertility by including the hazard of disruption as a predictor of timing and likelihood of marital conception, and by including the results of previous fertility decisions as predictors of disruption of the marriage. We find that the hazard of disruption has strong negative effects on the hazard of marital childbearing, lengthening the intervals between births and decreasing the chances that a child will be born. This effect appears to be strongest for women who have had at least one child, either before or during the current marriage, although it is also large for childless women. Explicitly including the hazard of disruption in models of marital childbearing has sizable and important effects on many predictors of fertility.     

育龄妇女生育经历与其意愿生育孩子数的关系分析

文章从妇女自身意愿,也就是妇女对子女需求的角度实证分析了年龄、受教育年限、初婚年龄、户口、工作、居住地和所属地区、生育经历等对妇女意愿生育孩子数的影响,特别是考察了妇女自身的生育经历对妇女生育意愿的影响,并将年龄与生育经历的交互作用考虑进去。生育经历作为一个与年龄密切相关的变量,与年龄的交互作用共同影响了妇女的生育意愿选择。     

Female fertility history and mid-late-life health: Findings from China

China’s middle-aged and older women suffer from poorer health than men. Using national baseline data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), a survey conducted from 2011 to 2012, this article applies logistic models to investigate the association between female fertility history (parity, early childbearing, late childbearing) and middle-aged and late-life health. We find that parity is related to the mid-late-life health of women. Women with four children or more are more likely to suffer from activities of daily living (ADL) impairment and poorer self-rated health than those with one to three children. Early childbearing is associated with ADL impairment; however, the correlation is mediated by socioeconomic status. Early childbearing is related to self-rated health in later life by an indirect-only mediation effect via educational attainment and personal income.     

Divorce and parity progression following the death of a child: A register-based study from Finland

Most studies that have examined whether a child’s death influences parental relationship stability have used small-scale data sets and their results are inconclusive. A likely reason is that child loss affects not only the risk of parental separation, but also the risk of having another child. Hence parity progression and separation must be treated as two competing events in relation to child loss. The analysis in this paper used Finnish register data from 1971 to 2003, covering over 100,000 married couples whose durations of both first marriage and parenthood could be observed. We ran parity-specific Cox regressions in which process time started from the birth of each additional child. All marriages included women of childbearing age, none of whom had experienced any child death on entering the analysis. We find that child loss only modestly influences the divorce risk, whereas its effect on the risk of parity progression is considerable.     

Changes in union status during the transition to parenthood in eleven European countries, 1970s to early 2000s

Couples who have children are increasingly likely to have lived together without being married at some point in their relationship. Some couples begin their unions with cohabitation and marry before first conception, some marry during pregnancy or directly after the first birth, while others remain unmarried 3 years after the first birth. Using union and fertility histories since the 1970s for eleven countries, we examine whether women who have children in unions marry, and if so, at what stage in family formation. We also examine whether women who conceive when cohabiting are more likely to marry or separate. We find that patterns of union formation and childbearing develop along different trajectories across countries. In all countries, however, less than 40 per cent of women remained in cohabitation up to 3 years after the first birth, suggesting that marriage remains the predominant institution for raising children.     

Women are key players in the economies of East and Southeast Asia

In 1996, the East-West Center's Program on Population investigated the links between population change and economic growth in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. This document discusses the findings pertaining to women's changing marriage and childbearing patterns, education attainment, and labor force participation as well as changes in family life. In eastern and southeastern Asia, women are delaying marriage and having fewer children as a result of their overwhelming acceptance of modern contraception. Concurrently, women's secondary school enrollment has increased dramatically since 1960, and women have accounted for steadily increasing proportions of total labor force growth. Economic development has led to fewer women employed in agriculture and more in clerical positions. Women continue to be marginalized in low-paying manufacturing jobs and to lose these jobs more frequently than do men. Women's labor force participation continues to be dependent upon their child care responsibilities, but women are beginning to combine both activities with the help of live-in grandparents. Women have made an important contribution to economic growth in Asia. Policies should address job discrimination against married women, wage discrimination, the problems faced by young women who leave home for employment in the manufacturing and service sectors, and the lack of child care facilities.     

儿童照料与二孩生育意愿 ——来自上海的证据

本文围绕一项针对上海市育龄女性的生育意愿调查,分别使用二分和有序Logit方法分析儿童照顾对上海市育龄女性的二孩生育意愿的影响。研究发现当育龄女性能够从家庭内和社会中获得更多孩子照料的时间支持时,她们有更高的二孩生育意愿,也会伴有更明确的二孩生育规划;双独家庭能够从父辈获得更多的经济、时间上的帮助,因此他们要比单独家庭和双非家庭更愿意再生一个孩子;居住于上海市城区的女性从某种程度上更易获得孩子的照料资源,有更多的优质教育资源可供选择,因此她们的二孩生育意愿高于居住于郊区的女性。此外,本文通过是否采用了避孕措施对二孩生育的意愿程度做了进一步区分,结果发现当第一个孩子主要是由孩子父母承担照料工作的时候,女性存在二孩生育意愿的程度是最低的,祖辈照料对二孩生育意愿程度的积极影响也明显低于社会性照料,此现象在上海市户籍的女性中体现尤为明显。最后为纠正自选择偏差问题,本文使用倾向值匹配方法(PSM)进一步验证了与首孩性别相比,首孩的抚养成本与接受照料情况显然对二孩生育意愿的影响程度更大。因此,本文认为加大公共托育服务的供给、为育龄女性提供高质量的0-3岁婴幼儿社会照料支持是提高二孩生育意愿的最有效政策。     

To have or not to have? Australian women’s childbearing desires,expectations and outcomes

Australia’s low fertility rate is commonly attributed to deliberate decisions by women to avoid having children. Existing theoretical explanations of fertility decision-making mostly view childbearing as a rational, voluntary process and focus on the ‘costs’ to women of having children. Although this may help explain why women do not have children, it contributes very little to understanding why women do have children. This study describes childbearing desires, expectations and outcomes in a population-based sample of 569 30–34-years-old Australian women recruited from the Australian Electoral Roll in 2005. Most women surveyed wanted to have children, and their childbearing outcomes were associated with biological, psychological and social factors including the lack of a partner and adverse health conditions. The factors and their relative importance varied by parity. Most women had fewer children than they desired, and many would have children, or more children, if their circumstances were different. These data challenge prevailing assumptions about women’s childbearing behaviour that women are able to choose when and if they have a child. Based on the findings, a conceptual framework of childbearing behaviour is proposed which builds on existing theoretical explanations to explain why women do and do not have children, differences by parity, and the role of circumstances in women’s childbearing behaviour. The findings and conceptual framework have implications for public policies, and indicate that multiple approaches are required which are sensitive to and address the barriers women face in family formation.     

Effect of Conflict on Age at Marriage and Age at First Birth in Rwanda

Using Rwanda Demographic and Health Survey 2005 data, we estimate a Cox proportional hazard model to identify the determinants of age at marriage and age at first birth and whether these decisions were affected by conflict. We find that women living in clusters accounting for a larger proportion of sibling deaths in 1994, the year of the genocide, were more likely to marry later and have children later compared with those living in clusters accounting for a lower proportion of sibling deaths. Women living in regions with higher levels of under-five mortality were more likely to have their first child earlier compared with women living in regions with lower infant mortality. The age at marriage was probably affected by two reasons: the change in age structure and sex ratio of the population following the genocide, and the breakdown of kinship in the case of women who lost their siblings.     

How female education affects reproductive behavior in urban Pakistan

Although Pakistan remains in a pretransitional stage (contraceptive prevalence of only 11.9% among married women in 1992), urban women with post-primary levels of education are spearheading the gradual move toward fertility transition. Data collected in the city of Karachi in 1987 were used to determine whether the inverse association between fertility and female education is attributable to child supply variables, demand factors, or fertility regulation costs. Karachi, with its high concentration of women with secondary educations employed in professional occupations, has a contraceptive prevalence rate of 31%. Among women married for less than 20 years, a 10-year increment in education predicts that a woman will average two-fifths of a child less than other women in the previous 5 years. Regression analysis identified 4 significant intervening variables in the education-fertility relationship: marriage duration, net family income, formal sector employment, and age at first marriage. Education appears to affect fertility because it promotes a later age at marriage and thus reduces life-time exposure to the risk of childbearing, induces women to marry men with higher incomes (a phenomenon that either reduces the cost of fertility regulation or the demand for children), leads women to become employed in the formal sector (leading to a reduction in the demand for children), and has other unspecified effects on women's values or opportunities that are captured by their birth cohort. When these intervening variables are held constant, women's attitude toward family planning loses its impact on fertility, as do women's domestic autonomy and their expectations of self-support in old age. These findings lend support to increased investments in female education in urban Pakistan as a means of limiting the childbearing of married women. Although it is not clear if investment in female education would have the same effect in rural Pakistan, such action is important from a human and economic development perspective.     

欧美女性非婚生育现象研究评介及启示

非婚生育是指发生在法定婚姻之外的生育行为。经济及非经济因素共同导致欧美非婚生育在黑人妇女和没有大学文凭的妇女中增加更多;与低收入未婚母亲相比,中产未婚母亲多提前为非婚生育构建了适当支持系统;非婚生育对未婚母亲及儿童福祉可能具有不利影响。鉴于我国学界对日趋普遍之非婚生育现象的重大忽视,希望通过回顾欧美研究成果,促进我国本土研究意识及进展。     

Using Changes in Life Satisfaction and Health to Predict the Survival Status Among Older Men and Women in Taiwan

Despite policies aimed at decreasing old-age income inequality, such as Social Security and Supplemental Security Income, research consistently finds that later-life poverty is highly concentrated among women. While the early-life economic disadvantages of motherhood are well established, little work has examined whether these disadvantages persist into later life. Life course research consistently demonstrates the relationship between early-life choices and later-life inequality, but few studies have examined whether the reproductive phase of a woman's life is associated with her later-life income. Using data from the 2003 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women cohort, this research examines whether women's age at first birth and parity are associated with her later-life income within the context of marriage. From a set of multivariate analyses, I find that despite a marginal statistically significant effect, substantively for the women in this cohort the effects of childbearing are not particularly consequential for later-life income. The results suggest that as women age the economic penalties associated with motherhood are less important to financial well-being than are other factors.     

Early Childbearing Patterns and Women's Labor Force Behavior in Later Life

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the consequences of early childbearing decisions for women's labor force activity in later life. Within a life course framework, women's early child-bearing activities may be linked to later life decisions. Women between ages 55 and 64 are evaluated from the 1984 Survey of Income and Program Participation. Two measures of early family roles are considered: total fertility (number of children ever born) and timing of first-birth (childless, prior to age 30, and 30+). Results provide some limited support that early childbearing roles do in fact have a long-term impact on the employment decisions of women. Women who delay childbearing are somewhat more likely to remain in the labor force during their later years whereas women who remain childless are more likely to have exited the labor force.     

Is Stepfamily Status Associated With Cohabiting and Married Women’s Fertility Behaviors?

Children from prior relationships potentially complicate fertility decision-making in new cohabitations and marriages. On the one hand, the “value of children” perspective suggests that unions with and without stepchildren have similar—and deliberate—reasons for shared childbearing. On the other hand, multipartnered fertility (MPF) research suggests that childbearing across partnerships is often unintended. Using the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth and event-history models, I examine the role of stepfamily status on cohabiting and married women’s fertility and birth intendedness, with attention to union type and stepfamily configuration. Adjusting for covariates, women in stepfamily unions are more likely to have a first shared birth in a union than women in unions in which neither partner has children from past relationships, but stepfamily births are less likely to be intended than unintended. Further, this association varies by union type: married women have similar birth risks across stepfamily status, but births are less likely to be intended in marital stepfamilies. For cohabitors, women in a stepfamily are more likely to have a birth than women in nonstepfamily unions, with no differences in intendedness. Configuration (whose children and how many) also matters; for instance, women with one child from a past relationship are more likely to have a birth and to have an intended than unintended birth than women with other stepfamily configurations. It appears that children from either partner’s prior relationships influences subsequent fertility decision-making, undermining the utility of the “value of children” perspective for explaining childbearing behaviors in complex families.     

Motherhood status and union formation in Moshi, Tanzania 2002-2003

Age at first union is increasing throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa at the same time that not all couples are waiting for marriage before their first sexual intercourse. We assessed the effect of a premarital first birth on entrance into a first union in an urban area in East Africa -- Moshi, Tanzania. The data come from the Moshi Infertility Survey of 2002-2003. Women who spent less than a year in single motherhood were significantly more likely than childless women to enter into a first union, although the magnitude of this relationship was weaker for more recent cohorts. Women who had been single mothers for 5 or more years (about two-thirds of women with a premarital birth) were significantly less likely than women without children to enter into a first union.     

Motherhood status and union formation in Moshi,Tanzania 2002–2003

Age at first union is increasing throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa at the same time that not all couples are waiting for marriage before their first sexual intercourse. We assessed the effect of a premarital first birth on entrance into a first union in an urban area in East Africa—Moshi, Tanzania. The data come from the Moshi Infertility Survey of 2002–2003. Women who spent less than a year in single motherhood were significantly more likely than childless women to enter into a first union, although the magnitude of this relationship was weaker for more recent cohorts. Women who had been single mothers for 5 or more years (about two-thirds of women with a premarital birth) were significantly less likely than women without children to enter into a first union.     

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.     

Marital and fertility careers of Russian women born between 1910 and 1934

Women born in Russia in the early decades of this century grew up in a period characterized by profound societal changes. Their lives were affected by often devastating events, in particular World War II, that ravaged society when they were entering their childbearing years. This note presents a detailed demographic analysis of the marital and fertility careers of women born between 1910 and 1934 based on individual retrospective life histories, collected in the most recent (5 percent) 1994 microcensus of the Russian Federation. It assesses the influence of external events on age at first marriage, widowhood, divorce, childlessness, parity, and age at birth. A comparison with younger cohorts shows that the societal disturbances had strong temporary effects. However, the final outcomes were not influenced very much: completed fertility continued its slow, secular decline.     

Subjective utility and plans for childbearing and employment

Nonrecursive models of plans for childbearing and employment were estimated for a sample of white married women, age 26 to 36, with one or two young children. Women's concerns about care of children already born did inhibit their employment plans. Further, plans to have another child in the near future had a direct negative effect on full-time employment plans among women with one child, but not among women with two children. No direct effects of childbearing plans on part-time employment plans were found. In contrast to earlier research on longterm childbearing and employment plans, no direct effects of employment plans on plans for childbearing were found. It is suggested that attainment of the two-child family marks a turning point in the relation between childbearing and wives' employment.This research was partially supported by grants from the Center for Population Research, NICHD to Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers, Seattle, Washington (1-R01-HD10683), and to the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison (1-R01-HD05876). I wish to thank Andrew R. Davidson for the opportunity to conduct the research. I am also grateful to Pamela Oliver, Larry Bumpass, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.     

Attitudes of welfare recipients toward marriage and childbearing

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) put the need for attitudinal change at the center of efforts to help welfare recipients become economically independent, avoid out-of-wedlock childbearing, and embrace marriage. In this paper, we focus specifically on attitudes, analyzing both differences in values and attitudes between welfare recipients and other women on the cusp of reform, as well as the effects of TANF reforms in two states on the attitudes and behaviors of women subject to the reforms. National data reveal few differences in values and attitudes between welfare recipients and other women once background characteristics are held constant. A majority of both groups believes that prospective parents should marry, but single parents can raise a child as well as married parents. Personal aspirations for marriage and further childbearing also are fairly similar. These similarities may be one reason that the literature has shown TANF to have limited effects on marriage and childbearing. A second set of analyses investigates the degree to which welfare recipients in Delaware and Indiana report that reforms affected their aspirations for marriage and childbearing. Self-reported impacts are greater for fertility than marriage attitudes. Even among those who report their attitudes were affected by reform, recipients appear to have difficulty acting on their marital and childbearing desires, dampening any effects on behavior. These findings reinforce the current sense among researchers and policy makers that more direct reforms are needed to have a substantial effect on marriage and out-of-wedlock childbearing.