Contraceptive Consistency and Poverty after Birth.

Unplanned pregnancies in the U.S. disproportionately occur among poor, less educated, and minority women, but it is unclear whether poverty following a birth is itself an outcome of this pregnancy planning status. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (n=2,101) and National Survey of Family Growth (n=778), we constructed two-year sequences of contraceptive use before a birth that signal an unplanned versus a planned birth. We regressed poverty in the year of the birth both on this contraceptive-sequence variable and on sociodemographic indicators including previous employment and poverty status in the year before the birth, race/ethnicity, education, partnership status, birth order, and family background. Compared to sequences indicating a planned birth, sequences of inconsistent use and non-use of contraception were associated with a higher likelihood of poverty following a birth, both before and after controlling for sociodemographic variables, and before and after additionally controlling for poverty status before the birth. In pooled-survey estimates with all controls included, having not used contraception consistently is associated with a 42% higher odds of poverty after birth. The positive association of poverty after birth with contraceptive inconsistency or non-use, however, is limited to women with low to medium educational attainment. These findings encourage further exploration into relationships between contraceptive access and behavior and subsequent adverse outcomes for the mother and her children.

First birth before first stable employment and subsequent single-mother 'disconnection' before and after the Welfare Reform and Great Recession.

We analyze data from two nationally-representative U.S. surveys that include cohorts of young women before and after the 1996 Welfare Reform. Women were more likely to have their first birth precede their first stable employment after than before the reform. Women with this life-course sequence were at higher risk of single motherhood and, as single mothers, were at higher risk of 'disconnection' simultaneously from earned income and public cash benefits. Declines in employment in the Great-Recession period resulted in 'disconnection' for between a fifth and a quarter of single mothers who did not experience stable employment before their first birth.

Does It Matter What She Wants? The Role of Individual Preferences Against Unmarried Motherhood in Young Women's Likelihood of a Nonmarital First Birth.

Most young people in the United States express the desire to marry. Norms at all socioeconomic levels posit marriage as the optimal context for childbearing. At the same time, nonmarital fertility accounts for approximately 40 % of U.S. births, experienced disproportionately by women with educational attainment less than a bachelor's degree. Research has shown that women's intentions for the number and timing of children and couples' intent to marry are strong predictors of realized fertility and marriage. The present study investigates whether U.S. young women's preferences about nonmarital fertility, as stated before childbearing begins, predict their likelihood of having a nonmarital first birth. I track marriage and fertility histories through ages 24-30 of women asked at ages 11-16 whether they would consider unmarried childbearing. One-quarter of women who responded "no" in fact had a nonmarital birth by age 24-30. The ability of women and their partners to access material resources in adulthood were, as expected, the strongest predictors of the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Nonetheless, I find that women who said they would not consider nonmarital childbearing had substantially higher hazards of fertility postponement and especially of marital fertility, even after controlling for race/ethnicity, mother's educational attainment, family of origin intactness, self-efficacy and planning ability, perceived future prospects, and markers of own educational attainment and work experience into early adulthood.

Implications of Changes in Family Structure and Composition for the Psychological Well-Being of Filipino Women in Middle and Later Years.

The health implications of multigenerational coresidence for older adults is a well-researched topic in the aging literature. Much less is known of its impact for women in midlife. We used data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Study (2002, 2005, 2007, and 2012) to study the influence of transitions in multigenerational household composition on depressive symptoms for women in midlife transitioning into old age. Our initial analysis showed little effect when we use the conventional classification of nuclear versus extended family and transition in and out of extended family. When we described shifts in the family environment by compositional changes, that is, change in the presence and absence of particular family members, we found significant association between depressive symptoms and two types of role transitions: the loss of a spouse in the household and the entry and exit of grandchildren in the household.

Retrospective Reporting of First Employment in the Life-courses of U.S. Women.

We investigate the accuracy of young women's retrospective reporting on their first substantial employment in three major, nationally-representative United States surveys, examining hypotheses that longer recall duration, employment histories with lower salience and higher complexity, and an absence of "anchoring" biographical details will adversely affect reporting accuracy. We compare retrospective reports to benchmark panel survey estimates for the same cohorts. We find that sociodemographic groups-notably non-Hispanic White women and women with college-educated mothers-whose early employment histories at these ages are in aggregate more complex (multiple jobs) and lower in salience (more part-time jobs), are more likely to omit the occurrence of their first substantial job or employment, and to misreport their first job or employment as occurring at an older age. We also find that retrospective reports are skewed towards overreporting longer, therefore more salient, later jobs over shorter, earlier jobs. The relatively small magnitudes of differences, however, indicate that the retrospective questions nevertheless capture these summary indicators of first substantial employment reasonably accurately. Moreover, these differences are especially small for groups of women who are more likely to experience labor-market disadvantage, and for women with early births.