TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bloom,David E.
AU  - Trussell,James
TI  - What Are the Determinants of Delayed Childbearing and Permanent Childlessness in the United States?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1140
PY  - 1983
Y2  - June 1983
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1140
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1140.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David E. Bloom
Harvard School of Public Health
Department of Global Health and Population
665 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: 617/432-0866
Fax: 617/432-6733
E-Mail: dbloom@hsph.harvard.edu

James Trussell
Princeton University
E-Mail: trussell@princeton.edu
AB  - This paper presents estimates of delayed childbearing and permanent childlessness in the United States and the determinants of those phenomena.The estimates are derived by fitting the Coale-McNeil marriage model to survey data on age at first birth and by letting the parameters of the model depend on covariates. Substantively, the results provide evidence that the low first birth fertility rates experienced in the 1970's were due to both delayed childbearing and to increasing levels of permanent childlessness. The results also indicate that (a) delayed childbearing is less prevalent among blackwomen than among non-black women, (b) education and labor force participation are important determinants of delayed childbearing, (c) the influence of education and labor force participation on delayed childbearing seems to beincreasing across cohorts, (d) education is positively associated with heterogeneity among women in their age at first birth, (d) the dispersion of age at first birth is increasing across cohorts, (f) race has an insignificant effecton childlessness, and (g) education is positively associated with childlessness, with the effect of education increasing and reaching strikingly highlevels for the most recent cohorts.
ER  -