137-140 Hoffman

Volume 29, Number 3, May/June 1997 1980, the rate increased by 61% among adolescents, by 69% among women aged 20–24, by 67% among 25–29 year-olds and by 82% among women aged 30–34.2 Indeed, the rates for these latter groups have continued to rise since 1991, even as the birthrate among adolescents has stabilized and turned slightly downward. As a result of these trends, nonmarital births now account for more than 40% of all births to women aged 20–24, 21% of births to those aged 25–29, and nearly 15% of births among women in their early 30s.3 There is a vast literature on the socioeconomic consequences of teenage childbearing,4 more than 70% of which is nonmarital.5 In contrast, there is virtually no information about the socioeconomic status of women who have nonmarital births after their teenage years. Thus, it is unknown whether their socioeconomic status is similar to that of women who had teenage births or whether nonmarital births to older women represent a fundamentally different demographic phenomenon than do nonmarital births to adolescents. In this research note, we examine the socioeconomic correlates of nonmarital childbearing among women aged 20 or older. We present an assessment of how Saul D. Hoffman is professor of economics in the Department of Economics, University of Delaware, Newark, Del. E. Michael Foster is assistant professor of public policy and economics, Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn. The authors are grateful to the Smith-Richardson Foundation for their financial support of this research, and would like to thank Damon Jones for his outstanding research assistance and Tecla Loup and Jean Yeung of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for their help with the data files. Economic Correlates of Nonmarital Childbearing Among Adult Women