An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United ...

An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States Author(s): George A. Akerlof, Janet L. Yellen and Michael L. Katz Source: The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 111, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 277-317 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: . Accessed: 09/10/2013 11:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@. .

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THE

QUARTERLYJOURNAL

OF ECONOMICS

Vol. CXI

May 1996

Issue 2

AN ANALYSISOF OUT-OF-WEDLOCKCHILDBEARINGIN THE UNITED STATES*

GEORGEA. AKERLOF JANET L. YELLEN MICHAELL. KATZ

This paperrelates the erosionof the customof shotgunmarriageto the legalization of abortion and the increased availability of contraceptionto unmarried women in the United States. The decline in shotgun marriage accounts for a significantfractionof the increase in out-of-wedlockfirst births. Several modelsillustrate the analogy between women who do not adopt either birth control or abortionand the hand-loomweavers,both victims of changingtechnology.Mechanisms causing female immiseration are modeled and historically described.This technology-shockhypothesis is an alternative to welfare andjob-shortagetheories of the feminization of poverty.

I. INTRODUCTION

When Daniel Moynihan wrote his famous report, The Negro Family [U. S. Department of Labor 1965] the black out-ofwedlock birth rate was 24 percent. Twenty-five years later this

*Theauthorsthank MichaelAsh, Halsey Rogers,and Neil Siegel forexcellent research assistance. They are grateful to Lawrence Katz, John Baldwin, Nancy Chodorow,Curtis Eaton, Pierre Fortin, Claudia Goldin, Bronwyn Hall, Eugene Hamill, Joseph Harrington,RichardHarris, Elhanan Helpman, EdwardLazear, RonaldLee, RichardLipsey,MarkMachina,CarlMason,HajimeMiyazaki,Preston McAfee,Daniel McFadden,James Montgomery,Fraser Mustard,Peter Nicholson, James Rauch, Christina Romer,David Romer,Paul Romer,Andrew Rose, Nathan Rosenberg,EdwardSafarian,AndreiShleifer,TamaraSpringsteen, Judy Stacy,Jame Wilcox,MichaelWolfson,and anonymousreferees forinvaluable comments. They thank the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the National Science Foundation under research grant number SBR-9409426 for generous financial support.Janet Yellenis Governorof the Federal Reserve System. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the opinions of the Federal Reserve System.

? 1996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1996.

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rate, defined as the percentage of births to unmarried women, had more than doubled, to 64 percent. Over the same period the white out-of-wedlockbirth ratio experienced yet faster growthalbeit from a lower-level-more then quintupling, from 3.1 percent to 18 percent.1Rising out-of-wedlockbirthrates are of social policy concern because children reared in single-parent households are more likely to be impoverished and to experience difficulties in later life.2

A majorrole in the increase in out-of-wedlockbirths has been played by the declining practice of "shotgun marriage."Until the early 1970s it was the norm in premarital sexual relations that the partners would marry in the event of pregnancy. The disappearance of this custom has been a major contributor to the increase in the out-of-wedlock birth ratio for both whites and blacks. In fact, about three-fourths of the increase in the white out-of-wedlockfirst-birthratio, and about three-fifths of the black increase, between 1965-1969 and 1985-1989 are explicable by the decrease in the fraction of premaritally conceived first births that are resolved in marriage. By that we mean that if the fraction of premaritally conceived births resolved by marriage had been the same from 1985 to 1989 as it had been over the comparable period twenty years earlier, the increase in the white out-ofwedlock birth ratio would have been only a quarter as high, and the black increase would have been only two-fifths as high.3

1. The simultaneous rise of out-of-wedlockbirths and other forms of social/ economicdistress such as crime, drug abuse, and poverty,especially in black urban ghettos, well documentedby Anderson [1990], Wilson [1987], and others, is consistent with Moynihan'sgloomypredictions.

2. A substantial literature documentsthat single parenthoodresults in a variety of adverse consequences for children (see, for example, Manski, Sandefur, McLanahan,and Powers [1992]).

3. The data forthis calculationare taken fromretrospectivemarital and fertility histories of the CurrentPopulationSurvey,with a shotgun marriagedefined as one occurringwithin seven months priorto the birth of the baby.The data are describedin the Appendix.The CPS fertility supplements were first used to estimate shotgun marriageratios by O'Connelland Moore[1980] and O'Connelland Rogers [1984]. The proportionof the change in out-of-wedlockbirths due to the change in the shotgun marriage rate is calculated as follows. If oowt and ooWt+l are the fractions of out-of-wedlockbirths, bcoowtand bcoowt+1are the fractionof births conceivedout-of-wedlock,and srt and srt+1are the shotgun marriage rates at t and t + 1, respectively,then the formulaforthe change in the out-of-wedlock

birth ratio due to the change in the shotgun marriage ratio is ((1 - srt )bcoow - (1 - srt)bcoowt+X)/(oow-t+oowt).The denominatoris the change in the out-ofwedlock birth ratio. The hrst term in the numerator is the fraction of out-ofwedlockbirths at t + 1. The secondterm is what the fractionwould have been at t + 1 if the shotgun marriageratio had been the same at t + 1 as at t. The difference between the first and the secondterm of the numeratoris the change in the out-of-wedlockbirthrate due to the change in the shotgun marriagerate.

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Ethnographic studies describe shotgun marriage in the late 1960s. For example, Rubin [1969], who studied working-class whites in San Francisco in the late 1960s, found that courtship was brief and quite likely to involve sexual activity. In the event of pregnancy, marriage occurred. One of her subjects expressed the matter succinctly and with the absence of doubt with which many social customs are unquestionably observed:"Ifa girl gets pregnant you married her. There wasn't no choice. So I married her."The norms regarding pregnancy and marriage were apparently much the same among blacks, although perhaps with greater ambiguity and more doubt since out-of-wedlock birthrates for blacks were much higher than for whites.4

For whites the shotgun marriage ratio began its decline at almost the same time as the advent of female contraception for unmarried women and the legalization of abortion. In the late 1960s and very early 1970s, many major states including New York and California clarified their laws regarding abortion (significantly prior to Roe v. Wade in January 1973). At about the same time it became easier as well as more common for unmarried people to obtain contraceptives. In July 1970 the Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried individuals was declared unconstitutional in the landmark case Eisenstadt v. Baird. (See Garrow [1994, p. 457].) This paper will explain why there might be a link between female contraception and the legalization of abortionand the declining shotgun marriage rate.

Why should there be such a link? Both the advent of female contraception and the legalization of abortion are analogous to technical change: each has shifted out the frontier of available choices. While the morality of using these options generates heated debate, family planners have viewed female contraception and abortion as welfare-improving for women: they have made women free to choose. But technological innovation creates both winners and losers. A cost-saving innovation almost invariably penalizes producers who, for whatever reason, fail to adopt it. The hand-loom weavers of Britain in the early nineteenth cen-

4. Thus, in the very poorPruitt-Igoepublichousingprojectin St. Louis,Rainwater [1970] reports, "marriageis consideredthe most attractive solution [to an unwanted pregnancy]."But the custom of marriage, at least in Pruitt-Igoe, was not unquestioned, for Rainwater also observes: "But it [marriage] is not automatic; shotgun weddings are to be carefully considered,because if the couple is not compatible,they are not likely to stay married."

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tury are the classic illustration of this point. In the case of female contraception and abortion, women who want children, and women who, because of indecision or religious conviction have failed to adopt the new innovations, have lost disproportionately.5 Technologicalchange may also benefit those who are not directly affected. For example, the development of yield-increasing varieties of wheat will lower wheat prices and benefit consumers. Analogously, in the case of female contraception and abortion, men may have been beneficiaries. Finally, it is conceivable that technologicalinnovation couldeven harm those who chooseto implement-it. For example, if wheat is inelastically demanded, the availability of a new variety that costlessly increases yields will benefit consumers;but the returns to farmers will decline as long

as they plant the same wheat acreage. The first task of this paper is to illustrate, through two theo-

retical models, how analogous mechanisms could operate with respect to increased availability of abortion and female contraception for women. These models will show how the legalization of abortionand the availability of female contraceptioncould result in a decline in the competitive position of women relative to men-especially if they do not use contraceptionor abortion.

In the first model a decline in the cost of abortion (or increased availability of contraception) decreases the incentives to obtain a promise of marriage if premarital sexual activity results in pregnancy. Those women who will obtain an abortion or who will reliably use contraception no longer find it necessary to condition sexual relations on such promises. Those women who want children, who do not want an abortion for moral or religious reasons, or who are unreliable in their use of contraception, may want marriage guarantees but find themselves pressured to participate in premarital sexual relations without any such assurance. They have been placed at a competitive disadvantage: in this case analogous to farmers who do not switch to the new varieties of wheat. Sexual activity without commitment is increasingly expected in premarital relationships, immiserizing at least some women, since their male partners do not have to assume parental responsibility in order to engage in sexual relations.

5. Accordingto the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth,mothers of children born out of wedlock in 1970 reported that 19 percent were wanted at the time; 65 percentwere mistimed or neither wanted norunwanted;15 percentwere unwanted. These numbers reflect the commonlyperceived indecision of women giving birth out of wedlock and ambiguity as to whether the children are wanted or unwanted.

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