Deciding to Wait: Partnership Status, Economic Conditions, and Pregnancy during the Great Recession

Christine Percheski,Rachel Kimbro

doi:10.15195/v4.a8

Abstract

The Great Recession was associated with reduced fertility in the United States. Many questions about the dynamics underlying this reduction remain unanswered, however, including whether reduced fertility rates were driven by decreases in intended or unplanned pregnancies. Using restricted data from the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 4,630), we exploit variation in state economic indicators to assess the impact of economic conditions on the likelihood of an intended pregnancy, an unplanned pregnancy, or no pregnancy for adult women without a college education. We focus on variations by partnership and marital status. Overall, we find that worse economic conditions were predictive of a lower risk of unplanned pregnancy. Women's odds of intended pregnancy did not, however, respond uniformly to economic conditions but varied by marital status. When economic conditions were poor, married women had lower odds of intended pregnancy, whereas cohabiting women had greater odds of intended pregnancy.

Highlights

The Great Recession was associated with reduced fertility in the United States
The unemployment rate is available at the Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) level; we investigate the associations between CBSA unemployment rates6 and pregnancy as a robustness check. (We find the same pattern of results using CBSA and state unemployment, including nearly identical point estimates in many models.)
The Great Recession was associated with reduced period fertility in industrialized countries around the world, including the United States

Summary

Introduction

The Great Recession was associated with reduced fertility in the United States. Many questions about the dynamics underlying this reduction remain unanswered, including whether reduced fertility rates were driven by decreases in intended or unplanned pregnancies. We use restricted data from the 2006–2010 NSFG matched to indicators of state-level economic conditions to examine how the recession impacted the likelihood of an intended pregnancy, an unplanned pregnancy, or no pregnancy. Among married women (panel A of Table 3), we see that unemployment rates and consumer confidence levels show a statistically significant association (p < 0.05) with intended pregnancy.

Results

Conclusion