Do Unmarried Parents' Expectations Predict Marital Transitions? Early Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study

Maureen Waller and Sara McLanahan

JCPR Working Papers from Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research

Abstract: This paper uses newly available information from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Survey to investigate how unmarried mothers' and fathers' expectations about marriage, in addition to their socio-economic and demographic characteristics, are related to transitions to marriage in the year following their child's birth. It also investigates factors that are associated with unmarried parents' expectations about marriage. The results show that mothers and fathers with higher expectations about marriage at the time of their child's birth were significantly more likely to marry between the time of the baseline and follow-up interview. After taking expectations into account, African-American mothers and fathers are less likely to marry, and parents at higher educational levels were more likely to marry, than other parents. We also find that relationship, gender, and socio-economic variables are important predictors of parents' expectations about marriage. However, these variables have somewhat different effects among mothers and fathers.

Date: 2002-01-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wop:jopovw:258

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in JCPR Working Papers from Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().