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

项目总结 R03将进行二次数据分析，以确定大衰退(GR)的因果影响 以及它对连续生育的美国女性生育能力的影响。我们的因果同一性fi阳离子策略 将采用非常简单但很少使用的队列间断设计。这一策略依赖于比较 例如，比较25岁时怀孕的妇女的出生情况 在出生于日历年t(“治疗”)至25岁出生的妇女队列中， 在出生于日历年t1的妇女队列中，正好在GR之前受孕(“对照”)。我们的分析 将利用极大的数字和近乎普遍的覆盖范围，现有超过1.31亿名新生儿 在美国出生微数据中。初步结果，如下所示，表明了显著的异质效应 年龄和队列的GR，(1)GR对美国最年轻和最年长的队列的影响很小，但(2) 对美国出生的妇女队列中每名妇女少生0.010到0.017个孩子的负面影响 在1980年至1990年期间，他们的年龄在19岁至29岁之间。这些初步的 fi赋值激发了我们对GR后生育力的目标2的分析-例如，最初的 GR的负面但很小的影响只是推迟了生育，或者反而导致了小而持续的 在GR之后的几年中下降。这些“恢复期”分析将再次采用队列不连续的方法。 设计对比“治疗”和“控制”生育队列的美国女性的生育能力。 我们的Identifi阳离子策略与以前研究中使用的策略不同，绝大多数这样的研究 利用失业率或其他因素的外生变化确定商业周期对生育率的影响 经济指标往往集中在多个衰退期和非衰退期。我们的战略，通过 相反，可以用来识别特定衰退的影响fic，这可能在 考虑到GR的持续时间和严重程度，GR的情况。 我们将从总体、州和县三个分析层面评估GR的影响及其后果。 这些分析的结果将回答各种问题，例如：(1)GR是否有更多 对特定年龄或特定人种和民族的负面影响；(2)生育率是否“休养生息” 在GR之后的一段时间内反弹较快的州和县更有可能出现；或(3)如果 GR可能引发了特定人群、人口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.