Do marital prospects dissuade unmarried fertility?
Do marital prospects dissuade unmarried fertility?
Unmarried fertility was a lot lower in the 1970s than in the 1990s. It was also the case that unmarried mothers had much lower marriage rates than non-mothers, a differential that has largely vanished over time. Could this marriage-market penalty have been strong enough to explain why unmarried fertility rates were lower then? To explore this issue, we introduce a new model of fertility and marriage, based on directed search. Relative to the existing literature, the essential contributions of the model are to allow for accumulation of children over the lifecycle and for the marriage of single mothers. We use the model, in conjunction with US survey data, to explore the impact of marital prospects on the fertility decisions of unmarried women. We find that the decline, from the 1970s to 1995, in marriage rates of unmarried women with no children, can account for the dramatic rise in unmarried women’s share of births over that period.
two-sided search, divorce, family, family economics, household formation, marital, marital dissolution, marriage, marriage rate, marriage and technological progress, maternity, motherhood, mothers, parent, premarital, single mother, single parent, fertility, family planning, household production and intra-household allocation
University of Southampton
Kennes, John
43f62d6d-a9fa-45ec-aec0-da1553994634
Knowles, John
0c41d933-fc6d-4a91-9e0f-0b07e5db84ac
1 May 2012
Kennes, John
43f62d6d-a9fa-45ec-aec0-da1553994634
Knowles, John
0c41d933-fc6d-4a91-9e0f-0b07e5db84ac
Kennes, John and Knowles, John
(2012)
Do marital prospects dissuade unmarried fertility?
(Centre for Population Change Working Paper, 23)
Southampton, GB.
University of Southampton
54pp.
Record type:
Monograph
(Working Paper)
Abstract
Unmarried fertility was a lot lower in the 1970s than in the 1990s. It was also the case that unmarried mothers had much lower marriage rates than non-mothers, a differential that has largely vanished over time. Could this marriage-market penalty have been strong enough to explain why unmarried fertility rates were lower then? To explore this issue, we introduce a new model of fertility and marriage, based on directed search. Relative to the existing literature, the essential contributions of the model are to allow for accumulation of children over the lifecycle and for the marriage of single mothers. We use the model, in conjunction with US survey data, to explore the impact of marital prospects on the fertility decisions of unmarried women. We find that the decline, from the 1970s to 1995, in marriage rates of unmarried women with no children, can account for the dramatic rise in unmarried women’s share of births over that period.
Text
2012_WP23_Do_Marital_Prospects_Dissuade_Unmarried_Fertility_Kennes_et_al.pdf
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More information
Published date: 1 May 2012
Keywords:
two-sided search, divorce, family, family economics, household formation, marital, marital dissolution, marriage, marriage rate, marriage and technological progress, maternity, motherhood, mothers, parent, premarital, single mother, single parent, fertility, family planning, household production and intra-household allocation
Organisations:
Social Statistics & Demography, Centre for Population Change
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 339161
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/339161
ISSN: 2042-4116
PURE UUID: d5dae3ad-d4f8-40b6-b325-747504e4892e
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Date deposited: 24 May 2012 13:13
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 11:10
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Contributors
Author:
John Kennes
Author:
John Knowles
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