Understanding the Fertility-Economy Link for Teenagers

描述（由申请人提供）：在1990年代，经济加强，青少年生育率和性活动率以及缺乏避孕措施的情况急剧下降。黑人女性青少年通常比白色女性青少年经历了更大的相对经济收益，生育率、性活动率和缺乏避孕措施的下降幅度更大。这些模式表明，经济与生育率相关结果之间可能存在联系。在这个项目中，我们将结合联合收割机国家总体经济数据与1997年全国青年纵向调查的个人行为数据，以估计经济变化如何影响生育率及其直接决定因素-性活动率，避孕措施的使用，怀孕和堕胎-对于所有青少年和种族/民族。我们将使用差异无差异方法来控制各州之间未观察到的异质性和影响全国青少年行为的一般因素（例如，魔术师约翰逊宣布他患有艾滋病）。 以前的研究人员已经研究了经济-生育率-结果之间的联系。然而，除了使用更多的当前数据，跨越建设到高峰的商业周期沿着以下衰退，我们作出了几个贡献。以前的研究使用狭义的经济措施（例如，国家青少年就业与人口比率）可能影响经济计量。我们的贡献之一是使用（1）国家总失业率，这几乎不应该受到青少年生育冲击的影响，并且比以前的研究中使用的措施更少受到抽样误差的影响，（2）基于国家工业构成的国家就业增长率和各州的国民产出增长率。另一个贡献是，我们将进行模拟，以确定在20世纪90年代，由于经济变化，性活动，缺乏避孕措施，怀孕和堕胎的比率发生了多大变化，我们将计算经济变化可以解释所有青少年和种族/民族的模式。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): During the 1990s, the economy strengthened and teenage fertility and the rate of sexual activity and the lack of contraception decreased sharply. Black female teenagers, who generally experienced greater relative economic gains than white female teenagers, had even greater declines in fertility, the rate of sexual activity, and the lack of contraception. These patterns suggest that there may be a link between the economy and fertility-related outcomes. In this project, we will combine state aggregate economic data with individual behavior data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from 1997 to estimate how changes in the economy affect fertility and its proximate determinants--the rate of sexual activity, contraception use, pregnancies, and abortions-- for all teenagers and across race/ethnicity. We will use a difference-indifference method to control for unobserved heterogeneity across states and generic factors that would influence teenage behavior across the country (e.g., Magic Johnson's announcement that he has AIDS). Previous researchers have examined the economy-fertility-outcomes link. However, besides using more current data that spans the build up to the peak of the business cycle along with the following recession, we make several contributions. Previous studies used narrowly defined economic measures (e.g., state teenage employment-population ratio) that are subject to sampling error from being based on small samples and subject to endogeneity in that exogenous fertility shocks could affect the economic measure. One of our contributions is to use (1) the aggregate state unemployment rate, which should hardly be affected by teenage fertility shocks and is less subject to sampling error than the measures used in previous studies and (2) a state employment growth rate based on the industrial composition of the state and national output growth rates across states. Another contribution is that we will perform simulations to determine how much the rates of sexual activity, lack of contraception, pregnancies, and abortions changed in the 1990s as a result of the economic changes, and we will calculate how much of the patterns for all teenagers and across race/ethnicity can be explained by the economic changes.