Nonmarital Childbearing: Social Policy & Union Formation

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议项目的具体目的是提高我们对社会政策（包括福利政策），社区背景因素，个人，合作伙伴和背景对非婚生育和随后的工会形成的影响的理解。拟议项目的四个阶段将产生与下列因素有关的重要信息：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婚姻的可能性;第四阶段：非婚生育和未婚父母结合模式随时间的变化。 拟议的项目将纳入生态视角，假设生育率和家庭形成行为将受到多个领域因素的影响。为了分析未婚父母的婚姻和同居，我们将考察孩子出生时亲生父母之间的关系特征。其他关系特征将包括父母关系，父母-子女关系，态度和生育意愿，以及亲生父母以前的家庭形成经验的措施。 我们纳入了一个生命历程的框架来分析每月的历史，合作伙伴的特点，婚姻和同居工会，生育两个周期的全国家庭增长调查（1995年，2002年）。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-研究非婚生育的关系背景和未婚父母之间的工会形成和解散的过程。我们将采用一个新的多层次和多过程建模包（aML），以评估选择的影响和决定未婚父母，婚姻和同居。 在福利立法持续改革的时代，研究和政策界将受益于我们的政策相关的实证研究，这是基于理论和研究文献的基础。

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.