Nonmarital Childbearing: Social Policy & Union Formation

描述(申请人提供)：该项目的具体目的是加强我们对社会政策(包括福利政策)、社区背景因素以及个人、伴侣和背景对非婚生育和随后的婚姻形成的影响的了解。拟议项目的四个阶段将产生与以下因素有关的重要信息：第一阶段：未婚男女非婚生子的可能性；第二阶段：未婚父母向婚姻和同居的过渡；第三阶段：随着时间的推移保持稳定结合的可能性；以及第四阶段：非婚生育和未婚父母之间形成婚姻关系的模式随时间的变化。拟议的项目将纳入生态观点，假设生育率和家庭形成行为将受到来自多个领域的因素的影响。我们将考察出生时亲生父母之间的关系特征，以分析未婚父母之间的婚姻和同居。其他关系特征将包括衡量亲子关系、亲子关系、态度和生育意愿，以及亲生父母以前的家庭形成经历。我们结合了一个生命历程框架来分析两个周期的全国家庭成长调查(1995,2002)中伴侣特征、婚姻和同居结合以及生育的逐月历史。我们还将使用一个新的全国性数据集-早期儿童纵向研究-生育队列-来研究非婚生育的关系背景，以及未婚父母之间婚姻的形成和解除的过程。我们将加入一个新的多层次和多过程建模程序包(AML)，以评估关于未婚父母、婚姻和同居决策的选择效果和内生性。在福利立法不断改革的时代，研究和政策界将受益于我们与政策相关的实证研究，这项研究以理论为基础，以研究文献为基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The specific aim of the proposed project is to enhance our understanding of the influence of social policies (including welfare policies), community context factors, and individual, partner, and background influences on nonmarital childbearing and subsequent union formation. The four stages of the proposed project wilt produce important information about factors associated with: Stage1: the likelihood that unmarried women and men will have a birth outside of marriage; Stage 2: the transition to marriage and cohabitation among unmarried parents; Stage 3: the likelihood of remaining in a stable union over time; and Stage 4: changes over time in patterns of nonmarital childbearing and union formation among unmarried parents. The proposed project will incorporate an ecological perspective, which posits that fertility and family formation behaviors will be influenced by factors from multiple domains. We will examine characteristics of the relationship between the biological parents at the time of the birth for analyses of marriage and cohabitation among unmarried parents. Additional relationship characteristics will include measures of the parent-parent relationship, the parent-child relationship, attitudes and fertility intentions, and previous family formation experiences of biological parents. We incorporate a life-course framework to analyze month-by-month histories of partner characteristics, marital and cohabiting unions, and childbearing for two cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth (1995, 2002). We will also use a new national data set - the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort- to examine the relationship context of nonmarital childbearing and the processes of union formation and dissolution among unmarried parents. We will incorporate a new multi-level and multi-process modeling package (aML) in order to assess selection effects and endogeneity of decisions about unmarried parenthood, marriage, and cohabitation. In an era of continued reforms to welfare legislation, research and policy communities will benefit from our policy-relevant empirical research, which is based on theory and is grounded in the research literature.