Trajectories of Unintended Fertility

Sowmya Rajan, S. Philip Morgan (), Kathleen Mullan Harris, David Guilkey, Sarah R. Hayford and Karen Benjamin Guzzo
Additional contact information
Sowmya Rajan: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
S. Philip Morgan: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kathleen Mullan Harris: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
David Guilkey: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Sarah R. Hayford: The Ohio State University
Karen Benjamin Guzzo: Bowling Green State University

Population Research and Policy Review, 2017, vol. 36, issue 6, No 5, 903-928

Abstract: Abstract Having an unintended birth is strongly associated with the likelihood of having later unintended births. We use detailed longitudinal data from the Add Health Study (N = 8300) to investigate whether a host of measured sociodemographic, personality, and psychosocial characteristics select women into this “trajectory” of unintended childbearing. While some measured characteristics and aspects of the unfolding life course are related to unintended childbearing, explicitly modeling these effects does not greatly attenuate the association of an unintended birth with a subsequent one. Next, we statistically control for unmeasured time-invariant covariates that affect all birth intervals, and again find that the association of an unintended birth with subsequent ones remains strong. This persistent, strong association may be the direct result of experiencing an earlier unintended birth. We propose several mechanisms that might explain this strong association.

Keywords: Unintended fertility; Selection; Life course; State dependence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11113-017-9443-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:poprpr:v:36:y:2017:i:6:d:10.1007_s11113-017-9443-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/11113/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11113-017-9443-3

Access Statistics for this article

Population Research and Policy Review is currently edited by D.A. Swanson

More articles in Population Research and Policy Review from Springer, Southern Demographic Association (SDA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().