Economic correlates of nonmarital childbearing among adult women

Family Planning Perspectives, May/Jun 1997 by Hoffman, Saul D, Foster, E Michael

The growth of nonmarital childbearing among women who are beyond their teenage years is well documented. Very little is known, however, about the economic status of these women. Data for 1991 from the nationally representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics indicate that the socioeconomic status of women who have had a nonmarital birth as an adult is similar to that of women who had a birth as an adolescent They have similar median income-to-needs ratios (2.29 vs. 2.17), and similar rates of poverty (20% vs. 23%) and welfare receipt (22% vs. 19%). Women who have had both teenage and postteenage nonmarital births fare particularly poorly: Their median family income is $11,280; nearly half receive welfare; and 55% are officially poor. However, women who first gave birth as adolescents but have not had subsequent nonmarital births do reasonably well: Fewer than 10% receive welfare, and their median income-to-needs ratio is 2.6. (Family Planning Perspectives, 29:137-140,1997)

Most research about and public attention on nonmarital childbearing is focused on teenagers. However, recent reports from the National Center for Health Statistics have noted the growing importance of nonmarital childbearing among women who are beyond their teenage years. Women aged 20 and older now account for a greater percentage of nonmarital births than do women younger than age 20. The nonmarital-birth rate is more than 50% higher among women aged 20-24 than among teenagers, and is approximately 30% higher among women aged 25-29 than among teenagers. Even women aged 30-34 have a nonmarital-birth rate that is only 15% lower than the rate among adolescents.1

Moreover, the nonmarital-birth rate during the 1980s and early 1990s increased more rapidly among women aged 20 or older than it did among teenagers: Since 1980, the rate increased by 61% among adolescents, by 69% among women aged 20-24, by 67% among 25-29 year-olds and by 82% among women aged 30-34 2 Indeed, the rates for these latter groups have continued to rise since 1991, even as the birthrate among adolescents has stabilized and turned slightly downward. As a result of these trends, nonmarital births now account for more than 40% of all births to women aged 20-24, 21% of births to those aged 25-29, and nearly 15% of births among women in their early 30s.3

There is a vast literature on the socioeconomic consequences of teenage childbearing,4 more than 70% of which is nonmarital.5 In contrast, there is virtually no information about the socioeconomic status of women who have nonmarital births after their teenage years. Thus, it is unknown whether their socioeconomic status is similar to that of women who had teenage births or whether nonmarital births to older women represent a fundamentally different demographic phenomenon than do nonmarital births to adolescents.

In this research note, we examine the socioeconomic correlates of nonmarital childbearing among women aged 20 or older. We present an assessment of how these women are faring along a number of important socioeconomic dimensions compared with women with different marital and fertility histories. Our goal is to provide preliminary evidence as to the potential economic implications of this growing demographic phenomenon.

Data

We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a nationally representative survey of approximately 7,000 U.S. households. The PSID collects data annually about all individuals in a household, and has done so since 1968. All family members in the original sample are followed as they form independent households; as of 1991, the year from which our data are drawn, the sample included nearly 30,000 individuals.

The PSID not only provides extensive socioeconomic information, but also full marriage and birth history data. Thus, we are able to link teenage fertility with fertility among women aged 20 or oldersomething that cannot be done with vital statistics-and to link socioeconomic data with a woman's entire fertility history. While the marriage and fertility history information in the PSID is arguably not as good as that in other data sets, which may provide more demographic detail or a larger sample, its data on economic conditions, especially family income and receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), are superior.

Our data come from the main PSID family-individual file and from two recently released PSID data sets: the 1985-1990 Childbirth and Adoption History file and the 1985-1990 Marriage History file. These two files include complete marriage and fertility data through 1991 for women of any age who were heads of households, wives or cohabitants in any year between 1985 and 1991 and also for women who were aged 12-44 in those years and were classified as "other family members."*

Information in the marriage and fertility files includes the dates of all births, marriages and changes in marital status, as well as whether a marriage ended in divorce, in separation or with the death of a spouse. Using the birth and marriage history data, we were able to construct information on the marital status of the mother at the time of a birth.^