1. Cumulative Early Life Adversity and Inequalities in Fertility and Family Structure Across the Life Course.
- Author
-
Williams, Kristi and Rouleau, Tanya
- Abstract
Family formation in the United States has changed dramatically in the past 50 years. The constellation of demographic shifts in the family, including declining fertility, delays in marriage, increases in cohabitation and divorce and, rising rates of nonmarital fertility have been collectively described as the "second demographic transition (van de Kaa 1987). Perhaps the most striking aspect of these demographic is the extent to which they are unequally distributed by socioeconomic status and race, making the family an important nexus for the reproduction of inequality (McLanahan and Percheski 2008). As such, understanding the etiology of these diverging pathways is of great importance. Most frameworks focus on the role of specific indicators of disadvantage, often measured in adulthood, in shaping the timing of specific family transitions. We argue that this focus results in an incomplete understanding of the cumulative nature of disadvantage over the life course in shaping family formation patterns and processes. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we demonstrate a graded relationship between level of early life adversity and increased risk of a teen birth, lower ages at first birth, number of children, especially among black women and black and Hispanic men, and number of marriages among white women. For women, educational attainment only partially mediates the association of early life adversity with these family structure patterns, suggesting that psychosocial processes linked to early life adversity structure women's future orientations and personal relationships in ways that shape their fertility and family structure over the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014