Abstract
The present study employs discrete-time hazard regression models to investigate the relationship between student loan debt and the probability of transitioning to either marital or nonmarital first childbirth using the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97). Accounting for nonrandom selection into student loans using propensity scores, our study reveals that the effect of student loan debt on the transition to motherhood differs among white, black, and Hispanic women. Hispanic women holding student loans experience significant declines in the probability of transitioning to both marital and nonmarital motherhood, whereas black women with student loans are significantly more likely to transition to any first childbirth. Indebted white women experience only a decrease in the probability of a marital first birth. The results from this study suggest that student loans will likely play a key role in shaping future demographic patterns and behaviors.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Addo, F. R. (2014). Debt, cohabitation, and marriage in young adulthood. Demography, 51, 1677–1701.
Addo, F. R. (2016). Financial integration and relationship transitions of young adult cohabiters. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 38, 84–99.
Addo, F. R., Houle, J., & Dwyer, R. (2016). Young, black, and (still) in the red: Parental wealth, race, and student loan debt. Race and Social Problems, 8, 64–76.
Allison, P. D. (2010). Survival analysis using SAS: A practical guide (2nd ed.). Cary, NC: SAS Institute.
American Association of University Women (AAUW). (2016). The simple truth about the gender pay gap. Washington, DC: AAUW. Retrieved from http://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/
Aronson, P. (2008). Breaking barriers or locked out? Class-based perceptions and experiences of postsecondary education. In J. T. Mortimer (Ed.), Social class and transition to adulthood: New directions for child and adolescent development (Jossey-Bass Education Series No. 119, pp. 41–54). San Francisco, CA: Wiley Subscription Services.
Aud, S., Fox, M., & KewalRamani, A. (2010). Status and trends in the education of racial and ethnic groups (NECES Report No. 2010-015). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDetail?accno=ED510909
Austin, P. C. (2011). An introduction to propensity score methods for reducing the effects of confounding in observational studies. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 46, 399–424.
Austin, P. C. (2013). The use of propensity score methods with survival or time-to-event outcomes: Reporting measures of effect similar to those used in randomized experiments. Statistics in Medicine, 33, 1242–1258.
Avery, C., & Turner, S. (2012). Student loans: Do college students borrow too much—Or not enough. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26(1), 165–192.
Barry, M. N., & Dannenberg, M. (2016). Out of pocket: The high cost of inadequate high schools and high school student achievement on college affordability (Policy brief). Washington, DC: Education Reform Now. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/files/EdReformNow%20O-O-P%20Embargoed%20Final.pdf
Baum, S., & Johnson, M. (2015). Financing public higher education: The evolution of funding (Report). Washington, DC: Urban Institute.
Baum, S., Ma, J., & Payea, K. (2013). Education pays 2013: The benefits of higher education on society (Trends in Higher Education Series report). New York, NY: College Board.
Baum, S., Ma, J., Pender, M., & Bell, D. (2015). Trends in student aid 2015 (Trends in Higher Education Series report). New York, NY: College Board.
Becker, G. S. (1981). A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bogue, D. J. (2010). Contraception, attitude-practice, and fertility differentials among US Hispanic, African-American, and white women. Journal of Population Research, 27, 275–292.
Bozick, R., & Estacion, A. (2014). Do student loans delay marriage? Debt repayment and family formation in young adulthood. Demographic Research, 30(article 69), 1865–1891. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2014.30.69
Cherlin, A. J. (2004). The deinstitutionalization of American marriage. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 848–861.
Child Trends. (2015). Births to unmarried women: Indicators on children and youth (Data Bank report). Bowling Green, OH: Child Trends. Retrieved from http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/75_Births_to_Unmarried_Women.pdf
Complete College America. (2015). Four-year myth: Make college more affordable. Restore the promise of graduating on time. Indianapolis, IN: Complete College America. Retrieved from http://completecollege.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/4-Year-Myth.pdf
Corbett, C., & Hill, C. (2012). Graduating to a pay gap: The earnings of women and men one year after college graduation. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women. Retrieved from http://www.aauw.org/files/2013/02/graduating-to-a-pay-gap-the-earnings-of-women-and-men-one-year-after-college-graduation.pdf
Dowd, A. C. (2008). Dynamic interactions and intersubjectivity: Challenges to causal modeling in studies of student loan debt. Review of Educational Research, 78, 232–259.
Dynarski, S. M. (2016). The dividing line between haves and have-nots in home ownership: Education, not student debt (Evidence Speaks Reports Vol. 1, No. 17). Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/home-ownership-FINAL2b.pdf
Emmons, W. R., & Noeth, J. B. (2015). Why didn’t higher education protect Hispanic and black wealth? (In the Balance No. 12). St. Louis, MO: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Retrieved from https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/in-the-balance/issue12-2015/why-didnt-higher-education-protect-hispanic-and-black-wealth
Federal Student Aid. (n.d.). Interest rates and fees. Retrieved from https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans/interest-rates
FinAid. (n.d.). Historical interest rates. Retrieved from http://www.finaid.org/loans/historicalrates.phtml
Fry, R. (2014). The changing profile of student borrowers: Biggest increase in borrowing has been among more affluent students (Social & Demographic Trends report). Washington DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/10/07/the-changing-profile-of-student-borrowers/
Furstenberg, F. F. (2014). Fifty years of family change: From consensus to complexity. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 654, 12–30.
Gibson-Davis, C., & Rackin, H. (2014). Marriage or carriage? Trends in union context and birth type by education. Journal of Marriage and Family, 76, 506–519.
Gicheva, D. (2016). Student loans or marriage? A look at the highly educated. Economics of Education Review, 53, 207–216.
Gladeaux, L., & Perna, L. (2003). Borrowers who drop out: A neglected aspect of the student loan trend (National Center Report No. 05-2). San Jose, CA: National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Goldrick-Rab, S. (2006). Following their every move: An investigation of social-class differences in college pathways. Sociology of Education, 79, 67–79.
Goldscheider, F. K., & Waite, L. J. (1986). Sex differences in the entry into marriage. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 92, 91–109.
Grinstein-Weiss, M., Parentie, D. C., Taylor, S. H., Guo, S., & Raghavan, R. (2016). Racial disparities in education debt burden among low- and moderate-income households. Children and Youth Services Review, 65, 166–174.
Guzzo, K. B., Nash, S. P., Manning, W. D., Longmore, M. A., & Giordano, P. C. (2014). Unpacking the “black box” of race-ethnic variation in fertility. Race and Social Problems, 7, 135–149.
Hayford, S., & Guzzo, K. B. (2016). Fifty years of unintended births: Education gradients in unintended fertility in the US, 1960–2013. Population and Development Review, 42, 313–341.
Hayford, S., Guzzo, K. B., & Smock, P. J. (2014). The decoupling of marriage and parenthood? Trends in the timing of marital first births, 1945–2002. Journal of Marriage and Family, 76, 520–538.
Hayford, S. R., & Morgan, S. P. (2008). The quality of retrospective data on cohabitation. Demography, 45, 129–141.
Hofferth, S. L., & Goldscheider, F. (2010). Family structure and the transition to early parenthood. Demography, 47, 415–437.
Huber, P. J. (1967). The behavior of maximum likelihood estimation under nonstandard conditions. In L. M. Le Cam & J. Neyman (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability. Vol. 1: Statistics (pp. 221–233). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Huelsman, A. (2015). The debt divide: The racial and class bias behind the “new normal” of student borrowing. New York, NY: Demos.
Huinink, J., & Kohli, M. (2014). A life-course approach to fertility. Demographic Research, 30(article 45), 1293–1326. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2014.30.45
Jackson, B., & Reynolds, J. (2013). The price of opportunity: Race, student debt, and college achievement. Sociological Inquiry, 83, 335–368.
Jones, J., & Schmitt, J. (2014). A college degree is no guarantee (CEPR Report). Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research. Retrieved from http://cepr.net/publications/reports/a-college-degree-is-no-guarantee
Kamenetz, A. (2006). Generation debt: Why now is a terrible time to be young. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
Keels, M. (2014). Choosing single motherhood. Contexts, 13(2), 70–72.
Kroeger, T., Cooke, T., & Gould, E. (2016). The class of 2016: The labor market is still far from ideal for young graduates (Report). Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved from http://www.epi.org/files/pdf/103124.pdf
Lamidi, E. (2016). A quarter century change in nonmarital births: Differnces by educational attainment (Family Profiles Report No. FP-16-05). Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research.
Lichter, D. T., Johnson, K. M., Turner, R. N., & Churilla, A. (2012). Hispanic assimilation and fertility in new destinations. International Migration Review, 46, 767–791.
Lundberg, S., Pollak, R., & Stearns, J. E. (2016). Family inequality: Diverging patterns in marriage, cohabitation, and childbearing. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(2), 79–102.
Manning, W. D. (2013). Trends in cohabitation: Over twenty years of change, 1987–2010 (Family Profiles Report No. FP-13-12). Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research.
Mathews, T. J., & Hamilton, B. E. (2016). Mean age of mothers is on the rise: United States, 2000–2014 (NCHS Data Brief No. 232). Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
Mezza, A., Daniel, R., Shane, S., & Sommer, K. (2016). On the effect of student loans on access to homeownership (Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-010). Washington, DC: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
Min, S., & Taylor, M. (2016, August). Estimating the effect of student loan debt on timing of marriage among race/ethnic groups. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Seattle, WA.
Minicozzi, A. (2005). The short term effect of educational debt on job decisions. Economics of Education Review, 24, 417–430.
Mulder, C. H. (2006a). Population and housing: A two-sided relationship. Demographic Research, 15(article 13), 401–412. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2006.15.13
Mulder, C. H. (2006b). Home-ownership and family formation. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 21, 281–289.
Nau, M., Dwyer, R. E., & Hodson, R. (2015). Can’t afford a baby? Debt and young Americans. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 42, 114–122.
Oppenheimer, V. K. (1988). A theory of marriage timing. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 563–591.
Patten, E. (2016). Racial, gender wage gaps persist in U.S. despite some progress (Fact Tank report). Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/01/racial-gender-wage-gaps-persist-in-u-s-despite-some-progress/
Payne, K. K. (2012). Timing of first marital birth (Family Profiles Report No. FP-12-11). Bowling Green, OH: National Center for Family & Marriage Research. Retrieved from https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-arts-and-sciences/NCFMR/documents/FP/FP-12-11.pdf
Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika, 70, 41–55.
Rothstein, J., & Rouse, C. E. (2011). Constrained after college: Student loans and early-career occupational choices. Journal of Public Economics, 95, 149–163.
Schwartz, C., & Mare, R. (2005). Trends in educational assortative mating from 1940 to 2003. Demography, 42, 621–646.
Scott-Clayton, J., & Li, J. (2016). Black-white disparity in student loan debt more than triples after graduation (Evidence Speaks Reports Vol. 2, No. 3). Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/black-white-disparity-in-student-loan-debt-more-than-triples-after-graduation/
Smock, P. J., & Greenland, F. R. (2010). Diversity in pathways to parenthood: Patterns, implications, and emerging research directions. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 576–593.
South, S. J., & Crowder, K. (2010). Neighborhood poverty and nonmarital fertility: Spatial and temporal dimensions. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 89–104.
Sweeney, M., & Raley, R. (2014). Race, ethnicity, and the changing context of childbearing in the United States. Annual Review of Sociology, 40, 539–558.
Titus, M. (2007). Detecting selection bias, using propensity score matching, and estimating treatment effects: An application to private returns using a masters degree. Research in Higher Education, 48, 487–521.
Wei, C. C., & Horn, L. (2013). Federal student loan debt burden of noncompleters (Statistics in Brief No. 2013-155). Washington, DC: Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.
White, H. A. (1980). Heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimator and a direct test for heteroskedasticity. Econometrica, 48, 817–838.
Wooldridge, J. M. (2007). Inverse probability weighted estimation for general missing data problems. Journal of Econometrics, 141, 1281–1301.
Wright, G., & Serrato, S. (2015). Default rate declines, yet 611,000 defaulted on federal student loans. Despite decreases, for-profit colleges account for the greatest share of defaults [Press release]. Oakland, CA: The Institute for College Access and Success. Retrieved from http://ticas.org/sites/default/files/pub_files/cdr_2015_nr.pdf
Wu, L. L., & Martin, S. P. (2009). Effects of exposure on prevalence and cumulative relative risk: Direct and indirect effects in a recursive hazard model. Sociological Methodology, 39, 185–232.
Yang, Y., & Morgan, S. P. (2003). How big are educational and racial fertility differentials in the U.S.? Social Biology, 50, 167–187.
Acknowledgments
A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the Population Association of America. This study was supported in part by the National Science Foundation Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 2016-1449440. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the National Science Foundation.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Min, S., Taylor, M.G. Racial and Ethnic Variation in the Relationship Between Student Loan Debt and the Transition to First Birth. Demography 55, 165–188 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0643-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0643-6