An Analysis of the Rise in Illegitimacy and Single Parenthood in the United States

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Abstract Within the last twenty years the percentage of children born out of wedlock and raised in single parent households has increased dramatically. While the existing literature has documented the adverse effects of such living arrangements on child development, the causes of these phenomena are not yet well understood. The purpose of this project is to develop and test empirically a theoretical construct to disentangle the causes of illegitamcy. In particular, the roles of changing male and female employment opportunities, AFDC benefits, improvements in contraception, and legalization of abortion will be analyzed. There is substantial evidence that an important cause of increasing illegitimacy is a break down of the custom governing the social norm that men should marry women who bear children as an unintended consequence of premarital sexual activity. These observations motivate the theoretical work, which focuses on the incidence of, and the response to, unplanned pregnancy. Illegitimacy will be explicitly modeled as the consequences of a sequence of decisions--about premarital sexual activity, the use of contraception, abortion in the event of pregnancy, and marriage, and the use of AFDC in the event of birth. In each of these decisions, welfare and the availability of jobs for men and women play a role, but so too do the costs and availability of contraception. The prediction of the theoretical model will be tested using data from a variety of national surveys including the National Survey on Family Growth, the CPS Fertility Supplements, and the NSLY. This model can used to reassess the roles of AFDC and male joblessness in promoting illegitimacy.