Trajectories of Unintended Fertility

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...

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Published inPopulation research and policy review Vol. 36; no. 6; pp. 903 - 928
Main Authors Rajan, Sowmya, Morgan, S. Philip, Harris, Kathleen Mullan, Guilkey, David, Hayford, Sarah R., Guzzo, Karen Benjamin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht SPRINGER 01.12.2017
Springer Netherlands
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Associations
Behavior
Birth
Birth intervals
Birth spacing
Births
Childbearing
Childbirth & labor
Demography
Ethnicity
Females
Fertility
Life course
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Personality
Personality tests
Personality traits
Population
Population Economics
Psychosocial factors
Social Sciences
Sociodemographics
Socioeconomic factors
Sociology
Trajectories
Unplanned pregnancy
Women
Womens health
State dependence
Selection
Life course
Unintended fertility
state dependence
unintended fertility
selection
life course
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Summary: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 timeinvariant 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.
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David Guilkey, Carolina Population Center, and Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 206 W Franklin St, Room 221, Chapel Hill NC 27516
S. Philip Morgan, Carolina Population Center, and Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 206 W Franklin St, Room 221, Chapel Hill NC 27516
Kathleen Mullan Harris, Carolina Population Center, and Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 206 W Franklin St, Room 201, Chapel Hill NC 27516
Sowmya Rajan, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 206 W Franklin St, Room 208, Chapel Hill NC 27516
Sarah R. Hayford, Department of Sociology, 205 Townsend Hall, 1885 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus OH 4321-1222
Karen B. Guzzo, Department of Sociology, 212 Williams Hall, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403
ISSN:0167-5923
1573-7829
DOI:10.1007/s11113-017-9443-3