The Relationship between Welfare Benefit Levels and Premarital Childbearing in Context: The Role of Structural and Normative Factors

这是一项关于福利水平和婚前生育的研究。它审查了福利水平和婚前生育之间的关系在多大程度上取决于社会和经济背景。环境被定义为包括规范性气候（与非婚生育相关的耻辱感、与领取福利相关的耻辱感、社区中的积极榜样）；避孕和堕胎在多大程度上是年轻妇女的选择（可得性、可接受性和可负担性）；以及经济机会（通过父母、潜在丈夫和工作）。迄今为止，研究人员已经含蓄地假设福利福利和婚前生育之间的关系在各种情况下都是恒定的。目前的研究考察了可能影响福利水平对婚前生育影响的三类背景因素。这些假设使用来自两个来源的纵向数据进行检验：收入动态小组研究和全国青年纵向调查。这些数据还补充了综合社会调查、当前人口调查和十年一次人口普查的背景资料。这项研究将提高我们对社会政策与文化和经济力量相互作用的方式的理解，从而改变当代社会的家庭结构。它还将增进我们对经济激励如何影响年轻妇女关于生育和婚姻的决定的理解。

This is a study of welfare benefit levels and premarital childbearing. It examines the extent to which the relationship between welfare benefit levels and premarital childbearing depends upon social and economic context. Contexts are defined to include normative climate (stigma associated with nonmarital childbearing, stigma associated with welfare receipt, positive role models in the community); the extent to which contraception and abortion are options for young women (availability, acceptability, and affordability); and economic opporotunties (through parents, potential husbands and employment). To date, researchers have implicitly assumed that the relationship between welfare benefits and premarital childbearing is constant across contexts. The current study examines three categories of contextual factors that may condition the effect of welfare benefit levels on premarital childbearing. The hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from two sources: the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. These data are supplemented with information on context from the General Social Surveys, the Current Population Surveys, and the decennial Censuses.This study will improve our understanding of ways in which social policy interacts with cultural and economic forces to alter the structure of the family in contemporary societies. It will also increase our understanding of the ways in which economic incentives influence young women's decisions about childbearing and marriage.