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The impact of economic resources on premarital childbearing and subsequent marriage among young American women

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Demography

Abstract

This paper extends previous work on premarital childbearing by modeling both the entry rates and the exit rates of unwed motherhood among young American women. In particular, I investigate the impact of economic resources on the likelihood of experiencing a premarital birth and then of subsequent marriage. Using a multiple-destination, multiple-spell hazard regression model and a microsimulation analysis, I analyze the accumulating effects of various economic variables. The results show that the economic resources are indeed important both for premarital childbearing and for subsequent marriage. However, the simulations show that large changes in these economic variables do not necessarily translate into large changes in nonmarital childbearing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Leicester, University Road, LE1 7RH, Leicester, UK

    Arnstein Aassve

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  1. Arnstein Aassve
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Additional information

I am grateful to Simon Burgess, Andrew Chesher, John Ermish, Carol Propper, and David Winter for very useful discussions and comments on this work. Also thanks to Francesco Billari, Janet Currie, Montezuma Dumangane, Kees Jan van Garderen, Jan Hoem, Jen Ireland, Hans-Peter Kohler, Tony Lancaster, and Paris Nearchou, who provided useful comments. I am also grateful to Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research for providing support during the revision of this paper. Above all, I am indebted to the three anonymous referees whose comments improved this paper immensely. Any remaining error lies with the author.

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Aassve, A. The impact of economic resources on premarital childbearing and subsequent marriage among young American women. Demography 40, 105–126 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2003.0001

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