Since the baby boom of the 1960s, births in the United Kingdom (UK) have been falling in number while age at first birth has risen. Low and late fertility is an important part of the second demographic transition (Van de Kaa, 1987). In the first years of the new millennium, while the total fertility rate has fluctuated slightly and has once again begun to rise, or catch up, the tendency to postpone entry to motherhood has persisted with a continued rise in average age at first birth (Office for National Statistics, 2007). However, this rise has not occurred as a neutral shift towards older ages. While teenage fertility rates have only dropped slightly since peaking in the late 1990s, this pace of change has not matched the dramatic rise in fertility among older age groups (Office for National Statistics, 2007).
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Notes
- 1.
It can be assumed that most teenage births would represent first births. To the author’s knowledge, statistics on birth order for births outside marriage are not collected. We therefore demonstrate these trends using statistics on all births.
- 2.
- 3.
This is addressed fully in Kneale (2008).
- 4.
References represent only a selected group of studies that examine these predictors.
- 5.
The later Millennium Cohort Study over-sampled within areas with a high ethnic minority population so that ethnic group effects could be researched. See chapter in this volume by Hawkes et al.
- 6.
Some observations have been artificially truncated at age 23 years, while information for a small minority of others has not been used in this analysis.
- 7.
Information for models of very early motherhood in NCDS are not presented because this distinction corresponds very closely with the teenage definition.
- 8.
Censoring began at 23 years onwards for some NCDS cohort members and 30 years onwards for BCS70.
- 9.
The results in these models represent the most parsimonious fitting model for predicting each definition. Other predictors tested but not found to be significant against other controls were as listed: NCDS: Parental Structure at ages 0, 7 and 11; other education test scores at ages 7 and 11; Cohort Participation. BCS70: Parental Structure at ages 0 and 10; other education test scores at ages 5 and 10 (and 16); receipt of Unemployment and Sickness benefits and School Attendance at age 11 years.
- 10.
All models also passed the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness of fit test which is a comparison of observed and expected frequencies of events across strata and is also a good indicator of redundant variables in models. In addition, likelihood ratio tests were also used to assess the significance of individual variables.
- 11.
Using the Hosmer-Lemeshow test; although these results appear to be dependent on the way that predictions are grouped (Harrell, 2001) and are not presented here in favour of ROC curve results, that are less responsive to this.
- 12.
Parental environment is examined in depth in other parts of the wider research Kneale (2008).
- 13.
This is a combined category in the data of 16--17 and 18--19. There was no option to choose any earlier.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Heather Joshi and Jane Elliott throughout this project both in editorial support and with analytical issues. I am very grateful for this support. I would also like to thank Brian Dodgeon for his help in solving data issues encountered in this chapter. Finally, I would like to acknowledge UPTAP and the ESRC for their financial support as well as all those involved with the NCDS and BCS70 studies including the cohort members themselves.
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Kneale, D. (2009). Early Parenthood: Definition and Prediction in Two British Cohorts. In: Kneale, D., Coast, E., Stillwell, J. (eds) Fertility, Living Arrangements, Care and Mobility. Understanding Population Trends and Processes, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9682-2_5
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