EDUCATION, MARITAL STATUS AND FERTILITY: A JOINT MODEL

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Women's roles in contemporary American society are interdependent and multi-faceted and the simultaneous juggling of several roles is commonplace. Indeed, life decisions in one aspect of a woman's life (e.g. marriage, motherhood, or schooling) influence and are influenced by other aspects. The purpose of this research is to better understand women's life course transitions in the context of the complexity of their real lives. In so doing, we address several important substantive issues and the findings from this research will inform policy and programmatic interventions. The first issue we will examine are the determinants and consequences of non-marital childbearing. Second, we will explore the relationship between adolescent childbearing and high school drop out. Third, we will provide a better understanding of the racial differences in family formation patterns and the educational process. Fourth, we will explore the determinants of women's educational process (for example, how marriage and childbearing influences schooling) and the ways in which the timing of childbearing (before marriage, during marriage) influences a woman's risk of divorce. To do this, we incorporate social and economic theories (both macro and micro) within the broader framework of a life- course perspective to examine the interrelationships between schooling, childbearing, and marriage (and divorce). Our interdisciplinary conceptual approach is innovative from several perspectives, first, we allow for a diversity of life course experiences (for example many women have a baby prior to getting married) and we consider the importance of a woman's social and economic environments in explaining her behavior. Second, the proposed study will provide a major methodologic contribution as well since we will model outcomes of related processes (e.g. childbearing and marriage) using simultaneous hazards (and probit) equations in which the jointness of these decisions is taken into account. Recent econometric innovations by the research team make this previously difficult task now possible. Therefore, our flexible conceptual and analytic model afford us with the ability to study women's lives as they are actually lived- Since the processes we are studying are behaviorally related (i.e. women in school are less likely to have children, etc.) only by better understanding how these behaviors are interwoven will appropriate and effective policies and programs be developed. The findings from this study will provide social scientists with a more complete picture of women's life-course experiences and will provide policy-makers with potentially new information regarding the nature of the timing of motherhood' marriage, and school completion.