Pregnancy during the Great Recession: Variations among U.S. Women by Partnership Status

• In Event: 574 - Section on Sociology of Population Paper Session. Demographic Consequences of Economic Crises

Abstract

The Great Recession prompted a dramatic decline in fertility in the United States,
but it is still unknown which groups of women were most responsive to the economic downturn
and which economic conditions were associated with the fertility decline. Using restricted
data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth (N=9,330), we exploit variation in
local economic indicators to assess the impact of local economic conditions on the likelihood of
a pregnancy for four groups of women: married adult women, cohabiting adult women,
unpartnered adult women, and teenage girls. We find that women’s odds of pregnancy did not
respond uniformly to economic conditions but rather varied by partnership status. Consistent
with hypotheses about the fertility-suppressing effects of recessions, we found that married
women had lower odds of pregnancy when local employment conditions were poor, and
unpartnered women had lower odds of pregnancy when mortgage foreclosure rates were high.
Cohabiting women, however, showed little variation in pregnancy rates across economic
conditions. Teenage girls showed greater odds of pregnancy when local unemployment was
high, though as a group they had lower pregnancy rates during the recessionary years.

Authors

• Christine M. Percheski, Northwestern University

• Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Rice University