An Analysis of the Rise in Illegitimacy and Single Parenthood in the United States

在过去的二十年里，非婚生子女和单亲家庭长大的孩子的比例急剧增加。虽然现有文献已经记录了这种生活安排对儿童发展的不利影响，但这些现象的原因尚未得到很好的理解。该项目的目的是发展和实证检验一个理论结构，以解开非法性的原因。特别是，将分析改变男性和女性就业机会、AFDC福利、改善避孕和堕胎合法化的作用。有大量证据表明，非婚生子女增多的一个重要原因是支配社会规范的习俗被打破了，这种社会规范认为，男人应该娶那些因婚前性行为而意外生下孩子的女人。这些观察结果激发了理论工作，其重点是意外怀孕的发生率和反应。非婚性将被明确地建模为一系列决定的后果——关于婚前性行为、避孕措施的使用、怀孕时的堕胎和婚姻，以及在分娩时使用AFDC。在每一项决定中，福利和男女工作的可获得性都发挥了作用，但避孕的成本和可获得性也发挥了作用。理论模型的预测将使用来自各种国家调查的数据进行测试，包括全国家庭增长调查，CPS生育补充和NSLY。这个模型可以用来重新评估AFDC和男性失业在促进非婚生子女的作用。

Abstract Within the last twenty years the percentage of children born out of wedlock and raised in single parent households has increased dramatically. While the existing literature has documented the adverse effects of such living arrangements on child development, the causes of these phenomena are not yet well understood. The purpose of this project is to develop and test empirically a theoretical construct to disentangle the causes of illegitamcy. In particular, the roles of changing male and female employment opportunities, AFDC benefits, improvements in contraception, and legalization of abortion will be analyzed. There is substantial evidence that an important cause of increasing illegitimacy is a break down of the custom governing the social norm that men should marry women who bear children as an unintended consequence of premarital sexual activity. These observations motivate the theoretical work, which focuses on the incidence of, and the response to, unplanned pregnancy. Illegitimacy will be explicitly modeled as the consequences of a sequence of decisions--about premarital sexual activity, the use of contraception, abortion in the event of pregnancy, and marriage, and the use of AFDC in the event of birth. In each of these decisions, welfare and the availability of jobs for men and women play a role, but so too do the costs and availability of contraception. The prediction of the theoretical model will be tested using data from a variety of national surveys including the National Survey on Family Growth, the CPS Fertility Supplements, and the NSLY. This model can used to reassess the roles of AFDC and male joblessness in promoting illegitimacy.