Poponoe 1993

showed that parents’ divorce also predict poor outcomes in adulthood

 “The consequences of divorce for adults and children.” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1269-1287.

Review article aims to answer five questions. . .

1. How do individuals from married and divorced families differ in well-being?

- Compared to married people, divorced people tend to have more psychological and physical (health and mortality) problems

- Some positive consequences of divorce include higher levels of autonomy and personal growth of individuals

- Amato and Keith’s 1991 meta-analysis suggested that children with divorced parents had lower academic achievement, poorer conduct, and lower self-concept and social competence than children with married parents

- Amato (1999) showed that parents’ divorce also predicted poor outcomes in adulthood

- However, when conflict at home is high, divorce may present an escape for children

2. Are these differences due to divorce or to selection?

 - The divorce-stress adjustment perspective views marital dissolution as a process that begins when the couple lives together and ends long after the legal divorce is concluded

- The selection perspective suggests that poorly adjusted people tend to select out of marriage

- Thus, with regards to child wellbeing, some of the problems observed in children following a divorce were likely present during the marriage as well

More empirical evidence for the divorce-stress-adjustment perspective

3. Do these differences reflect a crisis to which people adapt or life strains that persist indefinitely?

4. What factors mediate the effects of divorce on individual adjustment?

- For children, some factors that lessen the impact of divorce include quality of parenting, economic wellbeing, and experiencing fewer negative life events

5. What are the moderators that account for individual variability in adjustment to divorce?

- Resources that lessen the impact of divorce may reside within:

an individual (self-efficacy, coping skills, cognitive appraisals),

in interpersonal relationships (social support), and

in structural roles and settings (employment, government polices)

- The economic consequences of divorce are greater for women than for men because women have more interrupted work histories prior to divorce, experience more work-family conflict, etc.

- For children, social support and therapy have been shown to promote adjustment

- Mixed results for the impact of parental remarriage on child wellbeing

Meta-analysis suggested that children with

divorced parents had lower academic achievement,

poorer conduct, and

lower self-concept and social competence than children with married parents

finds parents attitudes about cohabitation influence child behaviors and child behaviors influence parents attitudes about cohabitations    

A theory of Marriage

Gains in marriage are greatest when women and men specialize in the labor market and home and trade on their comparative advantages.

Rational choice theory suggest that marriage is a rational arrangement between individuals who are more economically productive as an economic unit than they would be if they remained single

theories of marriage and family behavior hypothesize that women’s labor force participation had a critical impact on the family

“The evolution of the family.” In A Treatise on the Family. Pp. 237-256.

Consideration of the long-term evolution of the family and the ways in which the family has altered in the recent past

Traditional societies

- Kinship group was an effective “insurance company” in that they provide protection to members and monitor their members carefully

- Older persons held in great esteem because they have accumulated knowledge that is valuable to younger persons in stationary environment

- Although members of poorer and unsuccessful families often had little privacy, they did have greater autonomy in their economic and social choices than members of wealthier families

Modern societies

- Family insurance becomes less necessary as modern insurance markets all individuals to borrow capital or accumulate savings

- In fact, the value of individualism may have replaced traditional family values because many family functions were replaced by markets and other institutions

Last half of the twentieth century

- Major changes in the family driven by increased female labor force participation

- Social security reduces the amount spent by children to support retired parents

“Racial differences in marriage and the role of marriage markets.” The Journal of Human Resources, 32(4), 741-778.

 - Marriage market represent the potential pool of marriageable males in a given area

- Author examines these markets at the state, SMSA, and county level

- The economic characteristics used to define the marriageability of potential mates can include employment, full-time employment, income, and education

- Brien finds that marriage markets explain more of the difference in black-white marriage rates when the markets are defined at the state level rather than at the local level

Economic factors at the state level play a large role in the marriage rates of blacks and whites

suggests that the reduction in parent time spent with children attributable to increased labor force participation since the 1920s would be overestimated without considering changes in family size, observing who was actually looking after children in large families in the 1920s, and investigating the types of “unpaid work” mothers were doing instead of childcare

“Trends in cohabitation and implications for children’s family contexts in the US.” Population Studies, 54(1), 29-41.

Uses data from the NSFH and NSFG to examine how increases in cohab have affected the lives of children

Trends in cohabitation

- Cohab has increased, both within and across cohorts

- Cohab has increased more among the less educated than the well educated

- Increases in cohab greater among whites than blacks; by 1995 there was no racial difference in the proportion that had ever cohabited

- Cohab offsets the declines in marriage in the formation of joint hhs

Trends in union transitions

- Cohab continues to be a short-term status, with about half lasting 1 year or less

- Increasing instability of cohabiting unions resulting from a decline in the proportion who marry their cohabiting partner

Trends in childbearing

- Increases in nonmarital childbearing almost completely associated with cohabiting two-parent families

Trends in children’s living arrangements

- About 2/5 of children will spend some time in a cohabiting family before age 16

- Among children born to single mothers, about ¾ will experience cohabitation before age 16

- Children born to single mothers spend about half their time in a single-parent family

- Children born to married parents spend about 84% of their time in a married parent family

“Redefining single-parent families: Cohabitation and changing family reality.” Demography, 32(1), 97-109.

- Our measurement of single-parent families has become less accurate due to marked changes in nonmarital childbearing, unmarried cohabitation, and extended family arrangements

- This paper examines the implications of these two trends (cohab and living with extended family) for the prevalence and duration of mother-only families

- Find that increasing number of births to cohabiting parents almost completely accounts for increases in nonmarital childbearing

- 22% of “single-parent” time was not spent in a mother-only hh; 17% was spent in cohabiting hhs and 5% in extended family hhs

- In light of these findings, the authors advocate substituting coresidential unions for marriage when enumerating two-parent families

This assumes that cohabiting unions are similar to marriage; is this true?

Remarriages dissolve at higher rates than first marriages

“The changing character of stepfamilies: Implications of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing.” Demography, 32(3), 425-436.

- Cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing have been important aspects of the stepfamily experience for at least 2 decades

- To define stepfamilies only in terms of marriage underestimates both the level and trend in stepfamily experience

- When cohab is taken into account, about 2/5 of all women and 30% of all children are likely to spend some time in a stepfamily

Half of currently married stepfamilies were begun by cohabitation

- One-third of children entering stepfamilies did so following birth to an unmarried mother, rather than following parental marital disruption (as commonly assumed)

- In fact, the least frequent mode of young children’s entry into stepfamilies was via this traditional route (divorce and remarriage)

- Even among older children, less than half entered stepfamilies this way

- In light of these trends, we must understand more about variations in parenting behaviors between and within family types

- It is unlikely that cohabiting partners only become parents once they marry

- Marriage should no longer be a defining characteristic of a family, but rather a variable that affects and reflects conditions of family life

“The deinstitutionalization of American marriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 66(4).  848-861.

2 transitions have paved the way for the deinstitutionalization of marriage

By deinstitutionalization, Cherlin means the weakening of the social norms that define people’s behavior in a social institution such as marriage

First was the transition from institutionalized marriage to companionate marriage

- Spouses supposed to be each other’s friends and companions

Second was the transition to the individualized marriage

- Marriage is supposed to:

foster each partner’s self-development,

roles within marriage should be flexible and negotiable, and communication and openness confronting problems seen as essential

- One marker of the deinstitutionalization of marriage is the increasing acceptance of cohabitation as an alternative to marriage and the emergence of same-sex marriage

- Nevertheless, the vast majority of people still indicate that they want to get married, and most do eventually get married

- Cherlin argues that the major benefit of marriage is “enforceable trust”

- This allows partners to invest more emotionally and materially in the partnership

The prestige of marriage may have actually increased in light of recent cultural changes

- It is in the lowest classes of society, where marriage rates are lowest, that the prestige of marriage is highest

- People now marry less for the social benefit it provides than for the personal achievement it represents

“Demographic trends in the United States: A review of research in the 2000s.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 403-419.

- In 1988, Paul Gilck, the founder of family demography, gave an overview of the field in which he assumed that most people experienced a linear progression of family life involving being single, getting married, having children, experiencing an empty nest, and then death or widowhood

- By the 2000s, family demographers had moved away from the framework of a conventional, uniform, family life cycle

- Americans with high versus low ses now tend to follow very different pathways of family life

- One reason for this divergence might be reduced labor market opportunities for people without college degrees

- Also inconsistent with the family life cycle framework is the continuing separation of families and households

Trends in marriage

1. Increasing age at marriage

2. College-educated are more likely to ever marry than are the less educated, but they delay marrying more than other groups

3. Who one marries depends more on one’s education than in the past

Divorce

1. The aggregate risk of a marriage ending in divorce declined from its peak in 1980

2. Lifetime probability of a marriage ending in divorce is now between 40% and 50% (Raley and Bumpass 2003)

3. The probability of dissolution increased for all educational groups except those with college degrees

Fertility

1.  Fertility in the US is right around 2.1

2. The fertility of Hispanics tends to be higher than the national averag

3. In 1950, 4% of births occurred outside of marriage; in 2007, 39.7% of births occurred outside of marriage (National Center for Health Statistics)

4. By the mid-2000s, teenage birthrates had dropped to lowest in 2 decades

5. The rise of births to unmarried women occurred mainly among women without college degrees

6. About half of unmarried women who give birth are cohabiting with the fathers of their children (Kennedy and Bumpass 2008)

7. Parents who give birth outside of marriage are much more likely to have children with another partner

Cohabitation

- People with less education are more likely to cohabit, although cohabitation has become more common across all educational groups

Children’s living arrangements

1. The percent of children not living with both parents is around 40% (Ellwood and Jencks 2004)

2. One reasons for increasing numbers of kids living apart from a parent is the rise in incarceration; 25% of black children born in 1990 had a parent imprisoned by 14, whereas the corresponding percent for white kids was 4% (Wildeman 2009)

Early adulthood

- The percent of 20-29 year olds heading their own hh was 36% for women and 28% for men in 2000 (Rosenfeld 2007)

Immigration

- The “paradox of Mexican nuptiality” refers to the tendency of Americans of Mexican origin to marry at rates similar to whites, despite their lower socioeconomic status

 - It now appears that this difference is driven mostly by recent immigrants

Population aging

- Population aging will increase in importance of vertical kinship ties, up and down the generation

- Until late in old age, parents provide more economic assistance to adult children and grandchildren than vice versa (Agree and Glaser 2009)

- Large proportions of grandparents take on childcare responsibilities for grandchildren, especially among blacks

- More research is needed to determine how people with complex familial ties view their obligations to each other

In conclusion, the increasing complexity and ambiguity of family indicators suggests that demographic indicators of the family are losing their clarity

- Demographers may need to start thinking about statuses in terms of probabilities rather than with certainty

“Reinvestigating remarriage: Another decade of progress.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 1288-1307.

- Researchers paid little attention to stepfamilies until the 1970s, when divorce replaced bereavement as the leading precursor to remarriage

Demographic trends in remarriage

- Half of marriage in the US represent a remarriage for one or both partners (Bumpass, Sweet, and Castro-Martin, 1990)

- For both Blacks and Whites, half of women in remarriages give birth to at least one child (Wineberg, 1990)

- Must remembers that some first marriages create stepfamilies and stepparent-stepchild relationships

- Remarriages dissolve at higher rates than first marriages (Bumpass et al. 1990)

- Remarriages may be more fragile because they lack social support and  clearly defined norms, these individuals are more likely to view divorce as a solution to marital problems, and the smaller pool of partners for remarriages results in unions between people with dissimilar interests and values

Income inequality undermines marriage and union stability by making it harder for couples to achieve the standard of living they associate with marriage and

by reducing low skilled women’s motivation to delay having kids until after they marry 

“The changing course of fatherhood: Men’s experiences with children in demographic perspective.” Journal of Family Issues, 23(4), 486-506.

Examines changes in men’s experiences living with children over time using CPS data fro 1965 to 1995

4 research questions

1. What changes are evident across birth cohorts of men in the likelihood of living with children?

2. What cohort experiences are observed in the experience of living with many children or with very young children?

3. How does the timing of living with children vary across cohorts?

4. To what extent do the observed patterns vary by race and education?

Findings

- Decreased likelihood of living with children over time

- In 1965, 53% of adult men lived with their own children, whereas in 1995, only 35% of men lived with their own children

- Fatherhood has moved away from being a practically universal experience among adult men to merely a common one

- Black men show a retreat from fatherhood in recent cohorts

- Much less likely to be living with own children than Whites in middle age, although they are slightly more likely to be living with their children than Whites at older ages

- Racial differences don’t appear to be due to differences in education

- College educated men much less likely to be living with children in their twenties than high school dropouts

40% of children not living with both parents

Nonmarital childbearing much more prevalent among low SES and racial minorities

“Family instability and child wellbeing.” American Sociological Review, 72, 181-204.

- Prior research by Wu and Martinson (1993) found that the number of transitions a woman had experienced while growing up was significantly associated with her risk of nonmarital childbearing

2 mechanisms via which transitions among family types might harm children

Instability hypothesis posits that transitions of partners and parents into and out of the child’s household requires adjustments that can be stressful, and thus directly harm children

Selection hypothesis posits that certain characteristics of parents may both harm children and undermine their ability to maintain stable partnerships

- Using data from the NLSY, authors find that for white children, a mother’s prior characteristics strongly attenuate the association between the number of family structure transitions and child’s cognitive achievement

However, mother’s characteristics do little to attenuate association between transitions and child’s externalizing behavior problems and delinquency

- Transitions were not found to be associated to cognitive or behavior problems for black children

- Might be because black children have more extended kin to mitigate negative effects of otherwise stressful circumstances

“Higher hopes but even higher expectations: The retreat from marriage among low-income couples.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 1301-1312.

Use Fragile Families data to explore why low-income, unmarried parents who say they plan to marry at the time their child is born rarely follow through on their plans

- Only 15% of unmarried parents marry within the year following their child’s birth; in contrast, 21% break up (Carlson, McLanahan, and England 2004)

- Find that response bias arising from asking unmarried parents about marital intentions  between marital intentions and behavior

The most common barrier to marriage was financial stability

- Getting married should reflect that the couple has “arrived” in a financial sense

- Relationship quality also acts as a barrier to marriage; prior to getting married the couple should resolve any doubts about whether they are ready for marriage

In sum, at the heart of marital hesitancy is a deep respect for the institution of marriage

the founder of family demography,

Wrote overview of the field of family demography in which he assumed that most people experienced a linear progression of family life involving being single, getting married, having children, experiencing an empty nest, and then death or widowhood

“The racial crossover in family complexitity.” Demography, 40(3), 569-587.

- Popular opinion and academic research supports the supposition that living with extended family members is more prevalent among Blacks than Whites

- This paper uses census data to present evidence that this wasn’t always the case

- Prior to 1960, unmarried blacks were less likely, not more likely to live in complex households than whites

- Black men and women left home earlier and married at younger ages than whites

Family complexity declined greatly among unmarried whites between 1940 and 1990

- Suggests that the increase in nonfamily living, which most researchers have attributed to a growing taste for individualism, was much more characteristic of changes in the living arrangements of whites than blacks

“Marriage delayed or marriage foregone?  New cohort forecasts of first marriage for US women.” Americal Sociological Review, 66(4), 506-519.

Aim of article is to determine whether recent declines in first marriage rates signal that an increasing proportion of women will remain single their entire lives or merely that they are delaying marriage to older ages?

Theories of why people marry

Institutional theories emphasize that marriage is supported by a structure of norms, values, and laws, which explains why it h9as persisted despite dramatic changes in the economic role of marriage and the family

Rational choice theory (Becker, 1981) suggest that marriage is a rational arrangement between individuals who are more economically productive as an economic unit than they would be if they remained single

- Find that marriage will likely remain universal for cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960s—close to 90% of women predicted to marry

- Marriage forecasts by education suggest a changing pattern

- Whereas in the past, women with more education were less likely to marry, recent college graduates are forecasted to marry at higher levels despite their later entry into first marriage

- This education crossover occurs for both Black and White women

- These results support Oppenheimer’s (1994) argument that the declines in marriage that have occurred may be a result of greater obstacles among those who cannot afford it rather than a decline in the desirability of marriage

- The reversal of the relationship between education and marriage for women has potentially important implications for intergenerational inequality

“Absent and problematic men: Demographic accounts of male reproductive roles.” Population and Development Review, 26(1), 81-115.

This article examines the ways in which assumptions about gender roles, the history and motivations of demography, and its methodological limitations have influenced the study of men

3 specific aims

1. To describe why men have had a relatively low profile in demographic research on reproduction

- Argue that men’s reproductive span not as clearly defined as women’s, women easier to interview because they’re home more, children more likely to live with mother than father

2. To evaluate and characterize existing research on men, primarily in developing countries

- Some findings from this research include. . .

a. Men appear to be as knowledgeable as women about most kinds of birth control

b, Evidence mixed about whether men are more pronatalist than women

3. To suggest directions for future research

2 trends will become more salient in the future. . .

1. Loosening link between marriage and childbearing

2. Divergence of men’s and women’s reproductive experiences over their lifetime

“The fertility contributions of Mexican immigration to the United States.” Demography, 41(1), 129-150.

- Traditional cohort-component projections tend to underestimate the magnitude of immigrants’ births due to difficulties enumerating the number of immigrants who are at risk of childbearing

- Measurement of net immigration tends to be the weak link of cohort component method

- Authors propose a new and simplified “sending country birth cohort” method to replace projection of the dual processes of immigration and immigrants’ fertility with the projection of a single process of births in the receiving country to women born 15-44 years earlier in the sending country

- Benefits of this “SCBC” method is that it has fewer data requirements than a standard cohort-component projection (immigrants numbers and age-sex distribution no longer required), and denominator of rates more accurate (births in sending country rather than number of immigrants in receiving country)

- Using this method, authors project that Mexican-Americans will contribute 36.2 million additional births in the US between the early 1980s and 2040; by about 2031, the annual births to first and second generation Mexican immigrants will exceed 1 million (currently about 4 million births occur annually in the US)

- Comparing estimated to observed births up to 1999 suggests that the SCBC method underestimates births to Mexican-Americans much less than traditional cohort-component methods

report 2 reasons why poor are getting poorer and 2 reasons why rich are getting richer

Poor getting poorer

1. due to increase in single-parent families and

2. falling wages among men at the bottom end of the income distribution

Rich getting richer

1. growing income of men at highest end of income distribution and

2. employed women tend to be concentrated in high income families

show that local marriage markets do more to explain racial variation in marriage than individual characteristics

“Five decades of educational assortative mating.” American Sociological Review, 56(1), 15-32.

Whether persons with similar amounts of schooling marry each other depends partly on their preferences and partly on the structure of the marriage market

- Theoretically, marriages between persons with different amounts of schooling are less likely for highly educated persons and for persons who marry shortly after leaving school

- These arguments rest on the assumption that young people are likely to meet their potential spouse late in their school career

- At successive levels of schooling, the ultimate educational status of students still in school is increasingly homogeneous

- The effect of the time gap between school departure and marriage on educational homogamy is greater at higher levels of schooling

- As a result of these theoretical considerations, Mare predicts that with increasing proportions of persons attending at least some college, educational homogamy will be more sensitive to fluctuations in trends in the timing of marriage than in the past

- Using census and CPS data, Mare finds that the association between spouses’ schooling increased between the 1930s and 1970s and was stable in the 1980s

- After trends are adjusted for the length of time between leaving school and marriage, some evidence for increasing educational homogamy from the 1930s to the 1980s remains

“Family structure and the reproduction of inequalities.” Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 257-276.

Authors’ basic argument is that income inequality is a cause of single parenthood, which in turn engenders income inequality for both parent and child

- Income inequality as a cause of nonmarital childbearing

- Nonmarital childbearing much more prevalent among low SES and racial minorities (Ellwood and Jencks 2004)

- Income inequality undermines marriage and union stability by reducing the proportion of men in the population who are deemed suitable for marriage (Oppenheimer 1994), by making it harder for couples to achieve the standard of living they associate with marriage (Edin and Kefalas 2005), and by reducing low skilled women’s motivation to delay having kids until after they marry (Edin and Kefalas 2005)

Inequality as a consequence of nonmarital childbearing

- Children are harmed because single parenthood reduces parental resources (income and mental health) and undermining quality of parenting

- In addition, changes in family structure are contributing to growing inequality between whites and racial minorities and between men and women

“Women’s rising employment and the future of the family in industrial societies.” Population and Development Review. 20(2), 293-342.

This article critically examines the widely held view that the major factor responsible for recent trends in American marriage and fertility behavior is the postwar change in women’s economic position

Makes argument that the declines in marriage that have occurred may be a result of greater obstacles among those who cannot afford it rather than a decline in the desirability of marriage

- Major argument is that the one-sided emphasis on the role of women’s changing economic behavior and status as the most important determinant of these demographic shifts is unwarranted and discourages the investigation of potential alternative explanations

- For instance, the deterioration of men’s economic position since the 1970s likely played a big role in these demographic trends

- Review of the argument of women’s growing economic independence as responsible for shifts in marriage and fertility

- Parsons argued that sex-role segregation was a functional necessity for marital stability and even the viability of society itself

- Becker’s (1981) theories of marriage and family behavior hypothesize that women’s labor force participation had a critical impact on the family

- However, Oppenheimer shows that comparing recent trends in the family to patterns from the post-war period in the 1950s and early 1960s is a mistake

- Baby boom era was atypical in many ways, including:

1. age at marriage (at the turn of the century mean age at marriage was much higher and more variable),

2. marital stability (earlier and later marriages were more unstable), and

3. fertility trends (aside from the baby boom, the TFR had been declining since at least 1800)

- Taking the postwar era as a benchmark exaggerates the extensiveness of the break with traditional patterns and of the historical origins of many recent trends

- Another problem with the argument is that it tends to confound marriage postponement and nonmarriage

- The vast majority of women still get married at some point (although a relatively high proportion of black women do not)

- Furthermore, there is little evidence to suggest that women’s economic independence is correlated with decreased propensity to marry at the micro level

- Little difference in the proportion married by education group for women

- In contrast, for men, the more schooling the higher likelihood of being married

- This suggests that the economic position of men may be more important than that of women for explaining recent family behavior

- The economic position of both the least educated (less than high school) and moderately educated (completed high school) men had deteriorated since 1970

- These men appear to be struggling the most at the prime marrying ages (20-30)

- The increasing ratio of women’s to men’s earnings over the period is primarily driven by a decrease in men’s earnings rather than an increase in women’s

From another article

Income inequality undermines marriage and union stability by reducing the proportion of men in the population who are deemed suitable for marriage

“The divorce of marriage and childbearing: Changing attitudes and behavior in the United States.” Population and Development Review, 19(2), 331-347.

This article documents the increasingly permissive attitudes of Americans toward nonmarital fertility from 1974-1989 using data from 4 cross-sectional surveys

- Then examines social and demographic correlates of these attitudes to ascertain whether the structure of the determinants changed over time or whether the attitudinal shift was pervasive across social strata

- For much of the 20^th century, American social scientists have viewed childbearing outside of marriage as deviant behavior

- During the past 20 or 30 years the structure of the American family has been changing

- Marriage and childbearing have become increasingly separate

- In 1950, 2% of births to White mothers nonmarital; in 1989, 19.2% of births to White mothers nonmarital

- In 1963, 26% of births to Black mothers nonmarital; in 1989, 65.7% of births to Black mothers nonmarital

- Although nonmarital childbearing rates for Whites have more than tripled since 1970, they are still lower than the rates for Blacks in 1963

- Using data from the American Women’s Polls, authors find that there has been a substantial increase in tolerance of nonmarital childbearing since 1974 for both men and women

- Both Blacks and Whites exhibit increased acceptability, although the level of acceptability higher for Blacks

- Multivariate analyses reveal that more recent and better-educated cohorts are more tolerant of nonmarital childbearing

- Nevertheless, also find evidence for a pervasive shift in values across all social strata

- Association between education and values appears to decrease over time (better-educated may have pioneered the attitude shift, but their effect has since diminished)

Lifetime probability of a marriage ending in divorce is now between 40% and 50% (down a little since peak in 1980s)

“A shortage of marriageable men?  A note on the role of cohabitation in Black-White differences in marriage rates.” American Sociological Review, 61(6), 973-983.

Article explores the role of cohabitation in difference between Blacks and Whites in union formation

lack of black men contributes to lower union formation among black woman

- Wilson’s (1987) marriageable male hypothesis suggests that declines in marriage rates among African Americans result from decreased employment opportunities for young, Black men

- Because women tend to marry men of the same race who are as old or slightly older than them and who have an equal or higher level of education (Sweet and Bumpass 1987), Black women are less likely to marry than White women

Finds that differences in the marriage rates of Blacks and Whites are actually due to 3 factors:

1. the timing of first union,

2. first union type, and

3. the duration from first union to first marriage

- The difference in the timing of first union for Whites versus Blacks is about half of the timing in first marriage

- Blacks are less likely than Whites to cohabit, but the proportion of unions that are cohabiting (versus married) are greater for Blacks than for Whites

- The lower availability of employed men plays a role in the lower union formation among Black women, but is not as important in the racial difference in first union type

Note from another article:

Rates of marriage versus nonmarriage exaggerate Black-White differences in union formation;

when one considers both cohabiting and marital unions the race difference in the percentage of women who have entered a union is decreased by about one-half

“Temporal and regional variation in the strength of educational homogamy.” American Sociological Review, 65(5), 773-781.

Response of previous article by Smits et al.

- Argue that one problem with Smits et al.’s approach of using cross-sectional variation in economic development by region to infer temporal variation (aka “reading history sideways” Thornton 1992) is that it cannot deal with period effects and/or interactions between countries and time

- To see if Smit’s findings explain regional and temporal variations in educational homogamy within countries, Raymo and Xie use longitudinal data from Taiwan, Japan, China, and the US

- Authors do indeed find evidence for an inverted U-shaped relationship between level of development and educational homogamy

- Do not find evidence that higher levels of educational homogamy is an enduring characteristic of Confucian societies compared to Protestant societies

- In recent years, the strength of educational homogamy is very similar in both types of countries

“Social networks and family change in Japan.” American Sociological Review, 69(6), 838-861.

- Key features of the SDT include:

increasing education and delayed entry into full time work,

increasing participation of women in the paid labor force,

delayed marriage or nonmarriage,

delayed parenthood or childlessness,and

increasing levels of cohabitation, nonmarital births, divorce, single parenthood, and

use of childcare centers to facilitate combining work and family

- Japan has not experienced many of these components, such as cohabiation, widespread use of childcare centers, unmarried childbearing, and nonmarriage

Some features of the SDT in Japan have been. . . 

- Rising education and labor force participation for women

- Delayed entry into marriage (decrease in the percent unmarried at ages 25-29 from 21% in 1975 to 54% in 2000)

- Decreasing TFR (stable around 2.0 after WWII; began to fall again in 1970s to 1.3 by 2002)

- Authors argue that Japan is ripe for experiencing such changes, although given the dissimilarities between the history and culture of Japan and the West, some components of the SDT may not occur in Japan

- Authors postulate that change will occur when early innovators who have contact with others and convert others’ disapproval for these behaviors into tolerance or acceptance

- Find that a substantial number of people know someone who has engaged in the behaviors associated with the SDT (childcare, nonmarital birth, cohab, delayed or foregone marriage)

- People who have contact with innovators are more tolerant of these behaviors

- Furthermore, knowing someone who has engaged in any of these behaviors makes people more tolerant of a variety of behaviors

“The changing institutional context of low fertility.” Population Research and Policy Review, 22, 411-438.

- Until the 1980s, the association between country-level TFR and female labor force participation (FLFP) was negative

- During the 1980s, a shift occurred and this relationship became positive

- Since 1990 it has been strongly positive

- Incompatibility of work and family roles undoubtedly contributed to the negative association between TFR and FLFP

- Work and family incompatible because of the opportunity costs of foregone wages and the time pressures of managing both roles

- This incompatibility has affected women more than men because women typically take responsibility for childrearing

- However, the incompatibility of work and child-rearing is not a given; it varies over time and across countries

3 ways to reconciles work and childrearing are:

1. providing child-care,

2. offering flexible work hours, or

3. shifting gender roles so men take on more childrearing responsibilities

- Those countries that have minimized incompatibility between work and childrearing are likely to see high proportions of women who are working and mothers

- In contrast, countries that do not minimize incompatibility are likely to have low proportions working and mothers, because women have to choose between the two roles         

- Nevertheless, it is conceivable that other factors contributed to declining fertility in countries with low FLFP:

a. such as high unemployment rates, or

b. the particular familial and kinship patterns of certain countries

“Education and the changing age pattern of American fertility: 1963-1989.” Demography, 33(3), 277-290.

- Authors use pooled data from the 1980, 1985, and 1990 Current Population Surveys to describe fertility trends by age and education for the period 1963-1989

- Overall level of fertility remained fairly stable over this period (hovered around 1.9)

- However, beneath the surface of aggregate stability, changes were occurring due to changes in educational patterns, female labor force behavior and expectation, and childrearing practices

- Authors find that the association between education and fertility grew stronger over this period

- Although all education groups experienced shift toward later fertility over this period, the shift was greatest for women with a college degree or higher

- Lack of change in level of fertility likely due to more and more accepted use of childcare centers

- No evidence that this shift in the timing of fertility was concentrated in any racial, parity, or marital status groups

- Also cannot be explained by increasing post-graduate education

- One implication of this shift in the timing of fertility is that children born to highly-educated mothers are likely faring much better economically than children born to poorly-educated mothers

- Today, more and more highly educated women are waiting until they have a solid income to have kids; this, coupled with the educational homogamy of American marriages, is widening the resource gap between kids with more and less educated mothers

The percent of 20-29 year olds heading their own hh was 36% for women and 28% for men in 2000

“Trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940-2003.” Demography, 42(4), 621-646.

Paper examines trends in educational assortative mating from 1940 to 2003 in the US using data from the census and current population survey (CPS)

3 reasons why educational homogamy may be increasing

Structural explanation: At any given average age at marriage, as average educational attainment increases young people may be more likely to meet their partners in school and thus marry homogamously

- If the gap between completed schooling and marriage grows, however, young people may be more likely to meet their partners in more educationally heterogeneous contexts

- Increasing symmetry of men’s and women’s preferences for partners and women’s educational attainment and labor force participation has increased

- Increasing economic differentiation between education groups means that the social distance between people with different levels of education has likely also grown

- Results indicate that educational homogamy was higher in the 2000s than in any other decade, although these trends may have slowed since the early 1990s

Trends in educational homogamy were generated by different portions of the education distribution in different periods

- From 1960 through the early 1970s, the increases in homogamy primarily stemmed from decreases in intermarriage among well-educated people

- Since the middle 1970s, increases in homogamy stemmed from decreases in intermarriage at both the top and bottom of the education spectrum

- Find some evidence for decreasing educational homogamy when gap between schooling and marriage increases

In sum, recent trends in educational assortative mating point to the growing social distance between those with very low education and the population as a whole

“Families formed outside of marriage.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 62, 1247-1268.

Review summarizes the changing demography of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing, considers the causes and effects of these changes, and describes recent policies that formalize the relationship between members of families formed outside of marriage

Trends in cohabitation

 - In 1995, nearly 40% of women aged 19 to 24 had ever cohabited (up from 30% in the late 1980s)

- Increases occurred for all races and education groups, although increases were larger for those with less than a high school education and for non-whites

- Rates of marriage versus nonmarriage exaggerate Black-White differences in union formation; when one considers both cohabiting and marital unions the race difference in the percentage of women who have entered a union is decreased by about one-half (Raley 1996)

Cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing

- Cohabitors are responsible for much of the recent increase in nonmarital childbearing; in the early 1980s cohabs had about 29% of nonmarital births compared to 39% in the early 1990s

- The delay in marriage and rise to high levels of divorce, along with increasing acceptance of sex outside of marriage, expose many more US women to the risk of a nonmarital pregnancy

Cohabitation and union stability

- Over half of cohabiting unions end within one year, either because the couple breaks up or gets married

- Although divorce is more likely among couples who have previously cohabited, cohabitation likely lowers the rate of divorce because couples who would have divorced never married in the first place

- Many cohabitors choose to marry in response to a pregnancy; more common among Whites than Blacks

Cohabitation and gender roles

- There exists a greater similarity in men’s and women’s roles within cohabitation than within marriage, perhaps due to different goals among cohabitors or due to lack of institutional support for a gender-based division of labor within cohabitation

“A decomposition of trends in nonmarital fertility ratios of Blacks and Whites in the US, 1960-1992.” Demography, 33(2), 141-151.

Paper uses decomposition and standardization to analyze demographic factors responsible for increases in the nonmarital fertility ratio (illegitimacy ratio) of Blacks and Whites

- In the early 1960s, only one in four black children and one in twenty white children were born out of wedlock

- By the early 1990s, two out of every three black children and one out of every four white children were born out of wedlock

- FYI, today, just under 3/10 of white children and ¾ of black children are born out of wedlock (Hamilton et al. 2010)

- The nonmarital fertility ratio is the number of nonmarital births over the number of total births

4 components of the nonmarital fertility ratio

            - Age distribution of women of reproductive age

            - Proportion of women unmarried at each age

            - Age-specific birth rates of married women

            - Age-specific birth rates of unmarried women

Demographic patterns over this time period

Age distribution: Baby boomers shift the average age of women of reproductive age upward; greater for white women than for black women

Percentage unmarried: Increases in the percentage unmarried for both races, but greater for blacks than whites

In fact, in the 1990s marriage for black women of reproductive age had become the minority status

Nonmarital fertility: Black nonmarital fertility decreased during 1960s, was stable until mid-80s, and increased a bit thereafter; white nonmarital fertility showed increased beginning in late-70s

Marital fertility: Both white and black marital fertility decreased until mid-70s and then increased slowly thereafter

- Authors use standardization and decomposition to figure out how much of the change in the nonmarital fertility rates of blacks and whites were due to these four factors

Results

- Among blacks, decreases in the proportion married is number one contributor to increased nonmarital fertility ratio

- Some recent increases also due to increased birth-rates among unmarried women

- Among whites, increases in the non-marital birth rate is number one contributor to increased nonmarital fertility ratio

- Rates of marital fertility have actually increased slightly among both populations

Speculation about why these trends may be occurring

- Increase in the proportion unmarried among blacks may be due to decline in economic incentives for marriage

- Becker (1981) argues that male-female differences in labor market advantage produce strong incentives to marriage

- Ratio of male to female wages much smaller for blacks than for whites

- Getting married to legitimate a birth is no longer seen as necessary (becoming more normative to have a nonmarital birth)

“Educational homogamy in 65 countries: An explanation of differences in openness using country-level explanatory variables.” American Sociological Review, 63(2), 264-285.

- Degree of intermarriage can be conceptualized as an indicator of the “openness” of a society

- Differences in educational homogamy across 65 countries explained in terms of:

level of economic development,

degree of political democracy,

dominant religion, and

the technological background of developing countries

- Authors uncover an inverted U-shaped relationship between level of economic development and educational homogamy across countries

- With increasing levels of development, educational homogamy first increases, then peaks, and then decreases

In addition, countries with high levels of democracy show less educational homogamy

- Countries with a predominantly Catholic, Muslim, or Confucian population have more homogamy than countries with a predominantly Protestant population

- Industrializing countries with a primarily horticultural background show less homogamy than countries with a primarily agrarian background, perhaps due to the stronger position of women in horticultural societies

“Understanding racial differences in marital disruption: Recent trends and explanations.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 66(3), 639-650.

- Main question of authors is to investigate whether variation in the composition of populations of married Black and White women with respect to key risk factors for divorce can explain observed differences in the level of marital disruption experienced by these groups

- Decompose the results of discrete-time survival models of marital disruption to determine the contribution of differences in population composition with respect to age at marriage, educational attainment, having a premarital birth or conception, and region of residence to the overall racial gap in levels of marital disruption

Results

- In the mid-late 1980s, Black divorce rate increased and White divorce rate stabilized and/or decreased, which led to increased racial gap

- Educational attainment lowers risk of divorce for blacks more than whites

- Stronger protective effect of education for both races over time

Compositional effects

- Black women’s older average age at marriage reduces racial gap in divorce          

- Black women’s lower educational attainment and higher rates of premarital childbearing raises racial gap

- However, less than 20% of the White-Black disruption differential can be explained by these differences in composition

“Two decades of family change: The shifting economic foundations of marriage.” American Sociological Review, 67(1). 132-147.

Examines whether the relationship between economic prospects and marriage formation in the US has changed in recent decades

- Compares successive birth cohorts (early baby boom to late baby boom) to examine social changes within marriage

Becker’s specialization theory of marriage argues that the gains to marriage are greatest when men and women specialize in the labor market and the home, respectively, and trade on their comparative advantages in these tasks

- Women with a good position in the labor market should be less likely to marry

Oppenheimer’s career entry theory suggests that a couple must reach a certain standard of living before marrying

- For both men and women, heightened position in the labor market should increase likelihood of marriage

Sweeney uses discrete-time event history models to examine the effects of economic prospects on entry into first marriage

- Finds that over time, women’s earnings have become more important for entry into marriage for both whites and blacks

Little evidence for the erosion of the importance of male economic prospects for entry into marriage

- Becker’s specialization model likely no longer applies because increasing prevalence of marital dissolution means that women must be economically independent so as not to be vulnerable should their marriage fail

Support Oppenheimer's theory

Because women tend to marry men of the same race who are as old or slightly older than them andwho have an equal or higher level of education,

-> Black women are less likely to marry than White women

“The changing demography of America’s families.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(4), 1234-1246.

Objective of paper is to outline continued change in the family over the past three decades with attention to variation by race/ethnicity

- There has been a general decline in the early formation of marriages and an increase in the dissolution of marriages

- In 1975, 63% of whites and 47% of blacks aged 20-24 had ever been married; by 1998 these percentages had reduced to 31% for whites and 15% for blacks

- Much less change among Hispanics

- There has also been a large increase in permanent singlehood among black women; this retreat from marriage might be due to. . .

- Rise of the welfare state (disincentives to marriage)

- Increasing value placed on individualism

- Growth in economic independence of women and decline in economic power of men

- Wilson (1987, 1996) argues that decline in job opportunities among young, black men, particularly in inner cities, has diminished their ability to start and support a family

     - Wilson’s main argument was that the decline in the pool of “marriageable men” in local marriage markets has led to retreat from marriage among blacks

- Lichter et al. (1992) show that local marriage markets do more to explain racial variation in marriage than individual characteristics

- All three racial/ethnic groups experienced in increase in divorce between 1975 and 1990

- This growing prevalence of divorce has been matched by a pronounced decline in the percent of women remarrying

- Increased rates of nonmarital childbearing for all racial/ethnic groups

- Blacks have highest rates, followed by Hispanics, and then whites

- Both blacks and whites have experienced increases in median income between 1970 and 1997

- Hispanics have experienced only a very small upward shift

- Households headed by single women have a very poor economic position, and have experienced no gains between 1970 and 1997

- Men’s income over this period has stagnated, whereas women’s has increased greatly

- Greater wage inequality in 2000 compared to 1980

- Not only are rich families gaining income more rapidly than poor families, but the richest families are getting richer while the poorest families are getting poorer

- Karoly and Burtless (1995) report 2 reasons why poor are getting poorer and 2 reasons why rich are getting richer

- Poor getting poorer due to increase in single-parent families and falling wages among men at the bottom end of the income distribution

- Rich getting richer because growing income of men at highest end of income distribution and employed women tend to be concentrated in high income families

“Children and marital disruption.” American Journal of Sociology, 96(4), 950-953.

Article examines the extent to which children increase and/or decrease marital stability

- Tests the hypothesis that children represent the prime example of marital-specific capital (they decrease the probability that a married couple will disrupt their relationship by increasing both the attractiveness of the current marriage and the costs of leaving it)

- Authors predict that young children may have a stabilizing effect on marriage because they require more time, effort, and expense than do older children

- Older children require less of their parents’ time and are more emotionally independent

- Also predict that children born outside of marriage may increase the probability of divorce because they belong to only one of the partners, by providing ties to relationships outside of marriage, and by acting as a source of conflict within the marriage

Results

- No evidence that the number of children, considered by itself, affects the survival of marriage

- Young children decrease chances of disruption, and this effect is strongest for the first birth

- Children born out of wedlock and children older than 13 years old significantly increase the probability that a marriage will end in divorce

- In sum, over the long run, marriages with many children are only slightly more likely to survive than those with a few or even none

One reasons for increasing numbers of kids living apart from a parent is the rise in incarceration;

25% of black children born in 1990 had a parent imprisoned by 14,

whereas the corresponding percent for white kids was 4%

argues that decline in job opportunities among young, black men, particularly in inner cities, has diminished their ability to start and support a family

Wilson’s main argument was that the decline in the pool of “marriageable men” in local marriage markets has led to retreat from marriage among blacks

--marriageable male hypothesis suggests that declines in marriage rates among African Americans result from decreased employment opportunities for young, Black men

For both Blacks and Whites, half of women in remarriages give birth to at least one child

“Cohort estimates of nonmarital fertility for US women.” Demography, 45(1), 193-207.

Paper estimates historical cohort levels of nonmarital fertility using retrospective fertility data from the CPS rather than vital statistics data

- It is advantageous to have cohort estimates of nonmarital fertility rations in addition to period estimates because period measures reflect a mixture of different cohorts and are complicated by trends and the age structure of marital and nonmarital fertility

Some reasons why cohort nonmarital fertility ratios (CNMFR) may differ when calculated from CPS data versus vital statistics data

- The CPS truncates higher parity births; therefore CNMFR will be lower in CPS in earlier periods when women had more births (because these births would be in the denominator)

- CPS misses births to women who fall out of CPS sampling frame

- Marital status often imputed on birth certificates (direction of bias will depend on imputation procedure)

- Some births may occur outside the US (reported in CPS but not in vital statistics) or births that occurred in the US may have been to women who subsequently moved (reported in vital statistics but not CPS)

- Differences in mortality between women with marital versus nonmarital births would affect accuracy of CPS estimates

- Inaccurate fertility recall in CPS

Results

- For women born between 1925-1929, 1 out of 10 had a nonmarital birth by age 30

- For women born between 1965-1969, 1 out of 4 women had a nonmarital birth by age 30 (1/5 for white women, 3/5 for black women, and 1/3 for Hispanic women)

- Threefold increase in completed cohort nonmarital fertility ratio for women born in the 1920s compared to women born in the 1950s

- Policies aimed at reducing nonmarital fertility must recognize that the US fertility rate is as high as it is largely because of nonmarital fertility

- This relationship holds outside the US as well; European countries with relatively high birth rates are also those with relatively high levels of nonmarital fertility

What is it about marriage that causes some portion of the outcomes I outlined above? I think that four factors are the key.

First, the institution of marriage assumes a long-term contract, which allows the partners to make choices that carry immediate costs but eventually bring benefits. The long time horizon implied by marriage makes it sensible-rational choice is at work here-for individuals to develop some skills and to neglect others because they count on their spouse to fill in where they are weak. Thus married couples benefit from specialization and an exchange of what Grossbard-Shechtman (1993) calls "spousal labor." The institution of marriage helps individuals honor this long-term contract by providing social support for the couple as a couple and by imposing social and economic costs on those who dissolve their union.

Second, marriage assumes sharing of economic and social resources and what we can think of as co-insurance. Spouses act as a sort of small insurance pool against life's uncertainties, reducing their need to protect themselves by themselves from unexpected events.

Third, married couples benefit-as do cohabiting couples-from economies of scale.

Fourth, marriage connects people to other individuals, to other social groups (such as their in-laws), and to other social institutions which are themselves a source of benefits (Stolzenberg, Blair-Loy, and Waite 1995). It provides individuals with a sense of obligation to others, which gives life meaning beyond oneself. It may change the psychological dynamics of the relationship in ways that bring benefits. Some consensus exists that marriage improves women's material well-being and men's emotional well-being, in comparison with being single

The (Incompletely Institutionalized) Institution of Cohabitation Cohabitation has some but not all of the characteristics of marriage, and so carries some but not all of the benefits

suggests attitudes towards out of wedlock childbearing important predictors of having birth. Also important are exposure to out of wedlock terms and cohabitation. women with at least one child at higher risk for unplanned birth

especially for whites, cohabitation increases the likelihood of have a premarital births (planned births).

Time spent in families in light of increasing life expectancy  -- 

while years in a family and playing roles could potentially decrease it has in fact increased since 1800 even though the proportion of time spent declined since the 1960s.

women time with children increased but time at most demanding years had declined

Merton

marital homogamy - group size and spatial heterogeneity are inversely related