What Are the Determinants of Delayed Childbearing and Permanent Childlessness in the United States?
Year: 1983
Type: report
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This paper presents estimates of delayed childbearing and permanent childlessness in the United States and the determinants of those phenomena.The estimates are derived by fitting the Coale-McNeil marriage model to survey data on age at first birth and by letting the parameters of the model depend on covariates.Substantively, the results provide evidence that the low first birth fertility rates experienced in the 1970's were due to both delayed childbearing and to increasing levels of permanent childlessness.The results also indicate that (a) delayed childbearing is less prevalent among black women than among non-black women, (b) education and labor force participation are important determinants of delayed childbearing, (c) the influence of education and labor force participation on delayed childbearing seems to be increasing across cohorts, (d) education is positively associated with heterogeneity among women in their age at first birth, (d) the dispersion of age at first birth is increasing across cohorts, (f) race has an insignificant effect on childlessness, and (g) education is positively associated with childlessness, with the effect of education increasing and reaching strikingly high levels for the most recent cohorts.
DOI: 10.3386/w1140
Authors: David Bloom, James Trussell
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2030601912