Welfare Reform, Fertility and Reproductive Behavior

描述（由申请人提供）：人们普遍认为，非婚 生育阻碍了妇女获得经济保障和抚养子女的能力， 儿童在健康和安全的环境中。近年来，首先 与州政府，并最终在联邦立法体现， 1996年《个人和工作机会协调法》，福利 政策已经发生了巨大的变化，以阻止非婚 出生因此，本项目的主要目标是检查是否关键 最近的福利改革政策的规定，如福利期限和 家庭上限规定影响了婚外生育率、堕胎率和 19至35岁女性怀孕。重要的是，我们的建议 研究将提供关于福利改革对堕胎的影响的证据， 这不仅是因为它是一个重要的公共健康问题， 结果，但也因为它是一个可能的联系，在因果链连接 非婚怀孕和生育率的福利改革。此外，我们将 调查最近的福利改革是否影响了避孕和性生活 活动，福利改革和非婚姻之间的其他两个因果关系 怀孕，目前没有任何信息。 该提案的第二个目标将是在指导下收集 Stanley Henshaw博士与Alan Guttmacher研究所合作， 来自45个州和重要州的个人诱导终止记录 注册表保存这些数据。这是一个独特而重要的贡献 这是我们首次尝试收集个人数据， 自从国家卫生统计中心 差不多十年前就停止了在14个州的努力。这些微观层面 关于堕胎的数据使人们能够更精确地分析公共堕胎的影响。 堕胎政策的可能性要比联合国提供的堕胎数据更大。 疾病控制和预防中心（CDC）或Alan Guttmacher 研究所（AGI）。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): It is widely held that an out-of-wedlock birth hinders a woman's ability to achieve financial security and to raise children in a healthy and secure environment. In recent years, beginning first with state governments and culminating in the federal legislation embodied in the Personal and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), welfare policies have been dramatically altered so as to discourage out-of-wedlock birth. Thus, the primary objective of this project is to examine whether key provisions of recent welfare reform policies such as benefit time limits and family cap provisions affected rates of out-of-wedlock birth, abortion and pregnancy among women between the ages of 19 and 35. Importantly, our proposed research will provide evidence as to the effect of welfare reform on abortion, which is of interest not only because it is a significant public health outcome, but also because it is a possible link in the causal chain connecting welfare reform to rates of nonmarital pregnancy and birth. In addition, we will investigate whether recent welfare reform has affected contraception and sexual activity, two other causal links between welfare reform and non-marital pregnancy for which there is no current information. A secondary objective of the proposal will be to collect, under the direction of Dr. Stanley Henshaw, in collaboration with the Alan Guttmacher Institute, individual induced termination records from as many of the 45 states and vital registries that maintain such data. This is a unique and important contribution of our proposal for it represents the first attempt to collect individual data on induced terminations since the National Center for Health Statistics discontinued its effort in 14 states almost a decade ago. These micro-level data on abortions permit a more refined analysis of the effect of public policies on abortion than is possible with abortion data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI).