Nonmarital Childbearing: Social Policy & Union Formation

项目描述（由申请人提供）：该项目的具体目的是增强我们对社会政策（包括福利政策）、社区环境因素以及个人、伴侣和背景对非婚生育和随后的婚姻形成的影响的理解。拟议项目的四个阶段将提供有关下列因素的重要资料：第一阶段：未婚男女婚外生育的可能性；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，保持稳定联盟的可能性；第四阶段：随着时间的推移，未婚父母的非婚生育和婚姻形成模式发生了变化。该项目将纳入生态学的观点，认为生育和家庭形成行为将受到多个领域因素的影响。我们将研究出生时亲生父母之间关系的特征，以分析未婚父母之间的婚姻和同居。额外的关系特征将包括测量父母关系、亲子关系、态度和生育意图，以及亲生父母以前的家庭组建经历。我们结合了一个生命历程框架，分析了全国家庭成长调查（1995年和2002年）的两个周期中伴侣特征、婚姻和同居联盟以及生育的逐月历史。我们还将使用一个新的国家数据集——早期儿童纵向研究——出生队列——来研究未婚父母非婚生育的关系背景以及婚姻形成和解散的过程。我们将采用一个新的多层次和多过程建模包（aML）来评估未婚生育、婚姻和同居决策的选择效应和内生性。在福利立法持续改革的时代，研究和政策团体将受益于我们基于理论和研究文献的与政策相关的实证研究。

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.