Effects of Economic Shocks on Poor Women’s Marriage and Nonmarital Fertility: Evidence from the Great Recession

• In Event: 546 - Section on Sociology of Population Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Inequality, Uncertainty, and Fertility

Abstract

The United States has become increasingly characterized by stark class divides in family structure. Poor women are less likely to marry than their more affluent counterparts, but far more likely to have a birth outside of marriage. Recent theoretical and qualitative work at the intersection of demography and cultural sociology suggests that these patterns are generated because poor women have high, nearly unattainable, economic standards for marriage, but have effectively decoupled economic standing from fertility decisions. We use the events of the Great Recession, leveraging variation in the severity of the crisis between 2008 and 2012 and across states, to examine how sharp economic shocks affect poor women’s likelihood of marriage and of having a non- marital birth. In accord with theory, we find that low-SES women exposed to worse economic conditions are indeed less likely to marry. However, counter to theoretical expectations, we do not find evidence that economic standing is disconnected from non-marital fertility. Unmarried low-SES women exposed to worse economic conditions significantly reduce their fertility. We show that this affect is not simply generated by marital sorting effects of the recession and that the reductions are large in comparison to recession effects on married and more affluent women.

Authors

• Daniel J. Schneider, University of California-Berkeley

• Orestes 'Pat' Hastings, University of California-Berkeley