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Assisted Reproductive Technology and Women’s Timing of Marriage and Childbearing

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Abstract

This paper exploited variation in mandated insurance coverage of assisted reproductive technology (ART) across US states and over time to examine the connection between the price of ART and women’s timing of family including marriage and child bearing in and out of wedlock. Duration and competing risks analyses were estimated to investigate the effects of ART insurance mandates on women’s timing of first marriage and first birth using the 1968–2009 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The findings suggest that the mandates were associated with delayed marriage and childbearing at younger ages and an increased likelihood of marriage and motherhood at ages 30 and older, but only for college graduate women. For the full sample of women, the mandates were associated with an increased likelihood of marriage at ages 25 and older and motherhood within marriage after at ages 30 and older, but not with delay at younger ages. Results by race were similar to those for the full sample for Whites, but were generally less significant for Blacks. No significant effects of the mandates were found for out-of-wedlock childbearing.

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Notes

  1. See RESOLVE (2015) for a comprehensive list of coverage and coverage exceptions by state.

  2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, VitalStats.

  3. While it would be useful to compare the number of clinics for earlier years, 1995 is the earliest year clinic statistics are available. This figure excludes New Jersey and Louisiana since they adopted mandates in 2001 and change mandate status over the period depicted by the figure. Including these states results in a qualitatively similar depiction.

  4. For 1997–2009, the PSID only covers odd-numbered years. I extrapolated residence for even-numbered years.

  5. Since individuals of other races make up a very small proportion of the sample, specifications were run separately for Whites and Blacks only.

  6. This methodology is consistent with the approach used by Bitler and Schmidt (2012).

  7. Standard errors were not estimable for the specification for birth within marriage; however, the magnitudes of the hazard ratio estimates are consistent with those estimated for births within and out of wedlock.

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Shelly Lundberg, Anirban Basu, Seik Kim, Judith Thornton, Robert Plotnick, Elaina Rose, Rachel Heath, Laura Hosken, and Rob Letzler for their invaluable feedback. I would also like to thank seminar participants at the 2011 Western Economics Association International annual meetings and 2012 Society of Labor Economists annual meetings for their helpful comments.

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  1. U.S. Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill Road, Washington, DC, 20233, USA

    Joelle Abramowitz

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Correspondence to Joelle Abramowitz.

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Abramowitz, J. Assisted Reproductive Technology and Women’s Timing of Marriage and Childbearing. J Fam Econ Iss 38, 100–117 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-016-9485-4

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