Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Dec;36(6):903-928.
doi: 10.1007/s11113-017-9443-3. Epub 2017 Sep 27.

Trajectories of Unintended Fertility

Sowmya Rajan  1 , S Philip Morgan  1 , Kathleen Mullan Harris  1 , David Guilkey  1 , Sarah R Hayford  2 , Karen Benjamin Guzzo  3
Affiliations

Trajectories of Unintended Fertility

Sowmya Rajan et al. Popul Res Policy Rev. 2017 Dec.

Abstract

Having an unintended birth is strongly associated with the likelihood of having later unintended births. We use detailed longitudinal data from the Add Health Study (N=8,300) to investigate whether a host of measured sociodemographic, personality, and psychosocial characteristics select women into this "trajectory" of unintended childbearing. While some measured characteristics and aspects of the unfolding life course are related to unintended childbearing, explicitly modeling these effects does not greatly attenuate the association of an unintended birth with a subsequent one. Next, we statistically control for unmeasured time invariant covariates that affect all birth intervals, and again find that the association of an unintended birth with subsequent ones remains strong. This persistent, strong association may be the direct result of experiencing an earlier unplanned birth. We propose several mechanisms that might explain this strong association.

Keywords: life course; selection; state dependence; unintended fertility.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Ahmetoglu G, Swami V, Chamorro-Premuzic T. The relationship between dimensions of love, personality and relationship length. Archives of sexual behavior. 2010;39(5):1181–1190. - PubMed
    1. Allison PD. Comparing logit and probit coefficients across groups. Sociological Methods & Research. 1999;28(2):186–208.
    1. Barber JS, Axinn WG, Thornton A. Unwanted Childbearing, Health, and Mother-Child Relationships. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 1999;40(3):231–257. - PubMed
    1. Barber JS, East PL. Children’s Experiences after the Unintended Birth of a Sibling. Demography. 2011;48:101–125. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Barber JS, Emens A. The Intersection among Unintended, Premarital and Teenage Childbearing in the U.S. Population Studies Center Research Report. University of Michigan; Ann Arbor, MI: 2006. 06-608.

LinkOut - more resources