Entry Into and Exit From Family Roles: Determinants of Timing and Life-Time Probability of the Occurrence

本项目研究进入和退出与家庭相关的成人角色的决定因素，包括婚姻和婚前生育、婚姻、分居和同居。它超越了以前的方法，区分了事件时间的决定因素和事件寿命概率的决定因素。以前的方法无法区分时间和概率，因此，例如，它们无法判断离婚率较高是否意味着人群中的成员通常更有可能经历离婚，或者他们只是比其他人群的成员更早经历离婚。例如，PI已经开发了新的方法和模型来观察与高离婚率相关的某些风险因素是否会导致最终离婚的夫妇更高的可能性或加快离婚的时间。为该项目开发的软件将可供使用类似大型数据集的其他调查人员使用。

This project studies determinants of entry into and exit from family-related adult roles, including marital and premarital child birth, marriage, separation, and cohabitation. It goes beyond previous methodology by distinguishing between deter- minants of the timing of events and determinants of the lifetime probability of the events. Previous methods cannot distinguish timing and probability, so, for example, they cannot tell whether a higher divorce rate means members in the population are generally more likely to experience divorce, or whether they just experience it earlier than members of some other population. The PI has developed new methods and models to see, for example, whether certain risk factors associated with high divorce rates cause higher probabil- ities or accelerate the timing of divorce for those couples who will eventually divorce. Software developed for this project will be available for use by other investigators using similar large data sets.