IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/dem/demres/v33y2015i45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unintended pregnancy and the changing demography of American women, 1987-2008

Author

Listed:
  • Athena Tapales

    (Guttmacher Institute)

  • Lawrence Finer

    (Guttmacher Institute)

Abstract

Background: In 1987, the U.S. unintended pregnancy rate was 59 per 1,000 women ages 15-44; the rate fell to 54 in 2008. Over this period, American women experienced dramatic demographic shifts, including an aging population that was better educated and more racially and ethnically diverse. Objective: This study aims to explain trends in unintended pregnancy and understand what factors contributed most strongly to changes in rates over time, focusing on population composition and group-specific changes. Methods: We used the 1988 and 2006-10 waves of the National Survey of Family Growth and employed a decomposition approach, looking jointly at age, relationship status and educational attainment. Results: When we decomposed by the demographic factors together, we found that changes in population composition contributed to an increase in the overall rate, but this was more than offset by group-specific rate declines, which had an impact nearly twice as great in the downward direction. Increases in the share of the population that was cohabiting and the share that was Hispanic were offset by declines in rates among married women. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that a combination of compositional shifts and changes in group-specific rates drove unintended pregnancy, sometimes acting as counterbalancing forces, other times operating in tandem. Contribution: This paper shows the importance of both changes in population composition and changes in group-specific behaviors to the changing unintended pregnancy rate in the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Athena Tapales & Lawrence Finer, 2015. "Unintended pregnancy and the changing demography of American women, 1987-2008," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 33(45), pages 1257-1270.
    • Handle: RePEc:dem:demres:v:33:y:2015:i:45
    DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2015.33.45
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol33/45/33-45.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.4054/DemRes.2015.33.45?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Finer, L.B. & Zolna, M.R., 2014. "Shifts in intended and unintended pregnancies in the United States, 2001-2008," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(S1), pages 43-48.
    2. Sarah Hayford & S. Morgan, 2008. "The quality of retrospective data on Cohabitation," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 45(1), pages 129-141, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anna Garriga & Clara Cortina, 2017. "The change in single mothers’ educational gradient over time in Spain," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 36(61), pages 1859-1888.
    2. Vidhura Tennekoon, 2017. "Counting unreported abortions: A binomial-thinned zero-inflated Poisson model," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 36(2), pages 41-72.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stella Min & Miles G. Taylor, 2018. "Racial and Ethnic Variation in the Relationship Between Student Loan Debt and the Transition to First Birth," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(1), pages 165-188, February.
    2. Kelly Musick & Katherine Michelmore, 2018. "Cross-National Comparisons of Union Stability in Cohabiting and Married Families With Children," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(4), pages 1389-1421, August.
    3. Nima Khodakarami, 2019. "The Impact of Sex Education on Sexual Activity, Pregnancy, and Abortion," Papers 1903.08307, arXiv.org.
    4. Sarah Gold & Brandon Wagner & Sara McLanahan & Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, 2020. "Family instability from Birth to Adolescence: Evidence from a Birth Cohort Study," Working Papers wp20-03-ff, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    5. Anthony A. Noce & Dhimtri Qirjo & Namini De Silva, 2016. "Enticing the Stork: Can we Evaluate Pro-Natal Policies Before Having Children?," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 184-202, June.
    6. Jarl E. Mooyaart & Aart C. Liefbroer, 2016. "The Influence of Parental Education on Timing and Type of Union Formation: Changes Over the Life Course and Over Time in the Netherlands," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(4), pages 885-919, August.
    7. Paulina Gałęzewska & Brienna Perelli-Harris & Ann Berrington, 2017. "Cross-national differences in women's repartnering behaviour in Europe: The role of individual demographic characteristics," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 37(8), pages 189-228.
    8. Zandberg, Jonathan, 2021. "Family comes first: Reproductive health and the gender gap in entrepreneurship," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(3), pages 838-864.
    9. Sheela Kennedy & Catherine Fitch, 2012. "Measuring Cohabitation and Family Structure in the United States: Assessing the Impact of New Data From the Current Population Survey," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(4), pages 1479-1498, November.
    10. Dana Rotz & Brian Goesling & Hande Inanc & Gregory Chojnacki, "undated". "Economic Benefits of Delayed Sexual Activity," Mathematica Policy Research Reports 248b878cd4254142ac8c13102, Mathematica Policy Research.
    11. Fabio Blasutto, 2024. "Cohabitation vs. Marriage: Mating Strategies by Education in The USA," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 1723-1761.
    12. Victor Agadjanian & Premchand Dommaraju, 2011. "Culture, Modernization, and Politics: Ethnic Differences in Union Formation in Kyrgyzstan [Culture, modernisation et politiques: différences ethniques dans la formation des unions au Kirghizstan]," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 27(1), pages 79-101, February.
    13. Sara Yeatman & Christie Sennott & Steven Culpepper, 2013. "Young Women’s Dynamic Family Size Preferences in the Context of Transitioning Fertility," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(5), pages 1715-1737, October.
    14. Jessica Houston Su & Fenaba R. Addo, 2018. "Born Without a Silver Spoon: Race, Wealth, and Unintended Childbearing," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 600-615, December.
    15. Elizabeth Thomson & Helen Eriksson, 2013. "Register-based estimates of parents' coresidence in Sweden, 1969-2007," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(42), pages 1153-1186.
    16. Esther O. Lamidi & Wendy D. Manning & Susan L. Brown, 2019. "Change in the Stability of First Premarital Cohabitation Among Women in the United States, 1983–2013," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(2), pages 427-450, April.
    17. Fenaba R. Addo, 2017. "Financial Integration and Relationship Transitions of Young Adult Cohabiters," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 84-99, March.
    18. Lisbet S. Lundsberg & Eleanor B. Schwarz & Nicole A. Vilardo & Kimberly A. Yonkers & Aileen M. Gariepy, 2018. "Clinical Validation of PROMIS Global Short Form in Pregnancy," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 13(1), pages 89-103, March.
    19. Laura Wright, 2019. "Union Transitions and Fertility Within First Premarital Cohabitations in Canada: Diverging Patterns by Education?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(1), pages 151-167, February.
    20. Patrick Ishizuka, 2018. "The Economic Foundations of Cohabiting Couples’ Union Transitions," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(2), pages 535-557, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    unintended pregnancy; United States of America; decomposition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dem:demres:v:33:y:2015:i:45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Editorial Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.