Maternal Employment After a Birth: Examining Variations by Family Structure

Employment rates for married and unmarried mothers in the United States crossed over in the early 1990s, leading to questions about how marital status and family structure affect contemporary maternal employment. A mother's family structure whether she is married, cohabiting or living without a partner may affect her employment through her family's income needs, the instrumental and social support she receives, and her perceived security to pursue her preferred level of employment. Additionally, if a woman has a husband or cohabiting partner, she may take his preference for her employment level into account. Alternatively, selection may explain the association between family structure and maternal employment. In this analysis, I describe how the employment of mothers varies by family structure in the five years after giving birth. Before taking demographic or human capital characteristics into account, married, cohabiting and lone mothers have similar levels of employment. Using covariate adjustments to account for dierences in selection, I find that married mothers work less on average than unmarried mothers, and that cohabiting and lone unmarried mothers have very similar employment levels. Family income, family wealth, partner characteristics, and sex role attitudes do not explain this marriage eect. I argue that married mothers work less because they have greater perceived economic security, enabling them to pursue their preferred level of employment when their children are very young. Black married mothers are exceptional; on average, they work more than married white or Hispanic mothers and have similar employment levels as black unmarried mothers. This unique pattern may re ect lower economic security among black married women or a unique set of cultural values regarding the combination of childrearing and employment.Employment, motherhood, martial status, family structure

Deciding to Wait: Partnership Status, Economic Conditions, and Pregnancy during the Great Recession

The Great Recession was associated with reduced fertility in the United States. Many questions about the dynamics underlying this reduction remain unanswered, however, including whether reduced fertility rates were driven by decreases in intended or unplanned pregnancies. Using restricted data from the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 4,630), we exploit variation in state economic indicators to assess the impact of economic conditions on the likelihood of an intended pregnancy, an unplanned pregnancy, or no pregnancy for adult women without a college education. We focus on variations by partnership and marital status. Overall, we find that worse economic conditions were predictive of a lower risk of unplanned pregnancy. Women’s odds of intended pregnancy did not, however, respond uniformly to economic conditions but varied by marital status. When economic conditions were poor, married women had lower odds of intended pregnancy, whereas cohabiting women had greater odds of intended pregnancy

Did the Great Recession affect sex ratios at birth for groups with a son preference?

This paper examines the extent to which the Great Recession affected gender composition at birth. We focus on ethnic minorities in the US known for a son preference—Chinese, Indians, and Koreans. Using the DID method, we find that in response to the Great Recession, the fraction of newborn boys increased among Chinese Americans. Our results suggest that a cultural norm, namely son preference, may be directly affected by economic conditions

Pathways of Early Fatherhood, Marriage, and Employment: A Latent Class Growth Analysis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0022-

The Ups and Downs in Women's Employment: Shifting Composition or Behavior from 1970 to 2010?

This paper tracks factors contributing to the ups and downs in women’s employment from 1970 to 2010 using regression decompositions focusing on whether changes are due to shifts in the means (composition of women) or due to shifts in coefficients (inclinations of women to work for pay). Compositional shifts in education exerted a positive effect on women’s employment across all decades, while shifts in the composition of other family income, particularly at the highest deciles, depressed married women’s employment over the 1990s contributing to the slowdown in this decade. A positive coefficient effect of education was found in all decades, except the 1990s, when the effect was negative, depressing women’s employment. Further, positive coefficient results for other family income at the highest deciles bolstered married women’s employment over the 1990s. Models are run separately for married and single women demonstrating the varying results of other family income by marital status. This research was supported in part by an Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award

Students' approaches to the evaluation of digital information: Insights from their trust judgments

© 2015 British Educational Research Association. This study contributes to an understanding of the role of experience in the evaluation phase of the information search process. A questionnaire-based survey collected data from 1st and 3rd-year undergraduate students regarding the factors that influence their judgment of the trustworthiness of online health information. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. First-year students identified four factors: ease of use, content, recommendation and brand. Third-year students identified seven factors, in order of importance: content, credibility, recommendation, ease of use, usefulness, style and brand. They also were much clearer about their evaluation processes than 1st-year students; for 3rd-year students, the factor structure was clearer, and items generally loaded onto the expected factors. The significance of these findings is discussed and recommendations for practice and further research are offered

Fertility change in the American Indian and Alaska Native population, 1980-2010

Background: Since 1990, Vital Statistics reports show a dramatic decline in the total fertility rates (TFRs) of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women in the United States. Objective: We study whether the decrease in TFRs is due to a real change in fertility for a stable population; a compositional change in who identifies as AI/AN; or a methodological issue stemming from differences in identifying race across the data systems used to calculate fertility rates. Methods: We use data from the decennial US Census to study change in AI/AN fertility from 1980-2010. Results: We find declining TFRs when fertility is calculated within a single data system. Additionally, although TFRs are relatively stable within the subgroups of married and unmarried AI/AN women, the proportion of AI/AN women who are married has declined across birth cohorts. Conclusions: The decrease in TFRs for AI/AN women is a real change in fertility patterns and is not due to differences in racial identification across data systems. Contribution: We update knowledge of AI/AN fertility to include the decline in TFRs between 1980 and 2010

Health behaviors and union dissolution among parents of young children: Differences by marital status

<div><p>Previous research finds that marriage is associated with better health and lower mortality, and one of the mechanisms underlying this association is health-related selection out of marriage. Using longitudinal survey data from 2,348 couples from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine whether certain health behaviors—smoking and binge drinking—are associated with risk of union dissolution among couples with young children. We use discrete time hazard models to test whether associations between health behaviors and union dissolution differ between married and cohabiting parents. We find no statistically significant association between binge drinking and union dissolution for either cohabiting or married couples. Parental smoking, however, is associated with union dissolution. On average, married and cohabiting couples in which both parents smoke have a higher risk of union dissolution than couples in which neither parent smokes. Additionally, father’s smoking (in couples in which the mother does not smoke) is associated with union dissolution, but only for married couples. These findings illustrate the importance of considering the health behaviors of both partners and provide further evidence of differences in union dissolution dynamics between married and cohabiting couples.</p></div

Distribution of predictor and outcome variables by relationship type.

<p>Distribution of predictor and outcome variables by relationship type.</p