The Rising Share of Nonmarital Births: Fertility Choices or Marriage Behavior?

Jo Gray, Jean Stockard (jeans@uoregon.edu) and Joe Stone
Additional contact information
Jean Stockard: University of Oregon Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management

University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers from University of Oregon Economics Department

Abstract: Much of the sharp rise in the share of nonmarital births in the United States has been attributed to changes in the fertility choices of unmarried and married women - in response, it is often argued, to various public policies. In contrast, we develop and test a model that attributes the rise to changes in marriage behavior, with no changes in fertility. A variety of empirical tests strongly supports this conclusion and invites focused attention to issues related to marriage behavior, as well as the interactions between marriage and fertility.

Keywords: fertility; illegitimacy ratio; marriage; nonmarital fertility ratio; nonmarital births (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2004-11-01, Revised 2005-11-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://economics.uoregon.edu/papers/UO-2004-17_Gray_Rising_Share.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The rising share of nonmarital births: Fertility choice or marriage behavior? (2008)
Journal Article: The rising share of nonmarital births: Fertility choice or marriage behavior? (2006)
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:ore:uoecwp:2004-17

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers from University of Oregon Economics Department Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bill Harbaugh (wtharbaugh@gmail.com).