Abstract
This study uses data from the young women's and new youth cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth Labor Market Experience to examine the extent to which socioeconomic background factors and race have changed in their ability to predict a first birth before age 19 between 1968 and 1980 for women aged nineteen to twenty-three. The authors find little support for their hypothesis that the increasing availability of contraception and abortion for young women from all social classes reduces the traditionally strong inverse association between social class and early childbearing. There is evidence that, even after controlling for changes in socioeconomic background factors, black young women are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to bear children before age 19 in 1980 and the relative gap between races in this regard did not alter perceptively during that period.
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Prepared for presentation at the Population Association of America meetings, April/May 1987. The authors wish to thank Ronald D'Amico and Susan H. Mott for their helpful comments. This report was partially prepared under a contract with the U.S. Department of Labor with funds provided through an interagency agreement with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Interpretations or viewpoints in this document do not necessarily represent the official position or policy of the Department of Labor or the NICHD.
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Maxwell, N.L., Mott, F.L. Trends in the determinants of early childbearing. Popul Environ 9, 59–73 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01258272
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01258272