Effects of the Great Recession and its Aftermath on U.S. Fertility

项目摘要 该R 03将进行二级数据分析，以确定大衰退（GR）的因果影响。 以及它对美国女性生育能力的影响。我们的因果关系识别策略 将采用一个非常简单但很少使用的队列不连续设计。这种策略依赖于比较 例如，比较了怀孕妇女在25岁时的生育情况， 在GR期间，在日历年t（“治疗”）出生至25岁出生的妇女队列中， 在日历年t1出生的妇女队列（“对照”）中，在GR之前受孕。我们的分析 将利用超过1.31亿新生儿的巨大数量和近乎普遍的覆盖率 在美国出生率的微观数据中。下面介绍的初步结果表明， 按年龄和队列列出的GR，（1）GR对最年轻和最年长的美国女性队列的影响很小，但（2） 对于出生在美国的妇女群体，每名妇女的生育率减少0.010至0.017之间的负面影响 1980年至1990年期间，因此在GR期间年龄在19至29岁之间。 这些发现激发了我们对GR之后生育率的目标2分析-例如，最初的生育率是否 GR的负面但很小的影响只是推迟了生育，或者导致了小但持续的 这些“恢复”分析将再次采用队列不连续性 设计对比美国妇女的“治疗”和“对照”生育队列的GR后生育力。 我们的识别策略与以往研究中使用的不同，绝大多数此类研究 利用失业或其他方面的外生变化确定商业周期对生育率的影响 经济指标往往在多个衰退期和非衰退期汇总。我们的战略，通过 相反，可以用来确定特定衰退的具体影响，这可能特别相关， 鉴于GR的持续时间和严重程度， 我们将估计GR的影响及其后果，在总，州，县的分析水平。 这些分析的结果将回答各种问题，例如：（1）GR是否有更多的 对特定年龄或特定种族和族裔群体的负面影响;（2）生育率是否“恢复” 更有可能是在州和县，反弹更快，在此期间后的GR;或（3）如果 GR可能引发了特定队列、人口统计学群体或地区生育率的持续下降。

PROJECT SUMMARY This R03 will conduct secondary data analyses that will identify the causal effect of the Great Recession (GR) and its aftermath on the fertility of successive birth cohorts of U.S. women. Our causal identification strategy will employ a strikingly simple but rarely used cohort discontinuity design. This strategy relies on comparisons of births to women in adjacent birth cohorts, thus comparing, for example, births at age 25 that were conceived during the GR among the cohort of women born in calendar year t (“treatment”) to births at age 25 that were conceived just before the GR among the cohort of women born in calendar year t 1 (“controls”). Our analyses will exploit the extremely large number and near-universal coverage of the more than 131 million births available in U.S. natality microdata. Preliminary results, presented below, suggest strikingly heterogeneous effects of the GR by age and cohort, with (1) little effect of the GR for the youngest and oldest cohorts of U.S. women, but (2) negative effects of between 0.010 to 0.017 fewer births per woman for cohorts of U.S. women who were born between 1980 and 1990 and who were thus between the ages of 19 and 29 during the GR. These preliminary findings motivate our Aim 2 analyses of fertility in the aftermath of the GR—for example, whether the initial negative but small effects of the GR merely delayed childbearing or instead resulted in small but continuing decreases in the years following the GR. These “recuperation” analyses will again employ a cohort discontinuity design contrasting the post-GR fertility of “treated” and “control” birth cohorts of U.S. women. Our identification strategy differs from that used in previous research, with the vast majority of such studies identifying the effect of the business cycle on fertility using exogenous variation in unemployment or other economic indicators often pooled across multiple recessionary and non-recessionary periods. Our strategy, by contrast, can be used to identify effects specific to a particular recession, which may be especially relevant in the case of the GR, given its duration and severity. We will estimate the effect of the GR and its aftermath at aggregate, state, and county levels of analysis. Findings from these analyses will speak to a variety of questions such as: (1) whether the GR had more negative effects at particular ages or for particular race and ethnic groups; (2) whether fertility “recuperation” was more likely in states and counties that rebounded more quickly in the period following the GR; or (3) if the GR might have initiated a continuing decline in fertility for particular cohorts, demographic groups, or localities.