Relationship Status at First Birth for Women Age 15-50 in the United States

Lindsay M. Monte, U.S. Census Bureau
Renee Ellis, U.S. Census Bureau

In this poster, we explore new data about the marital and cohabitation status of women in the United States at the time when they first became mothers. For this, we use the Current Population Survey’s (CPS) June 2012 Fertility Supplement. The fertility supplement, asked of women ages 15-50, has historically asked women for the year of their most recent birth. However, in 2012, in an effort to reduce redundancy with similar questions in the American Community Survey, researchers at the Census Bureau changed the focus of the CPS Fertility Supplement to instead ask about women’s first births, and specifically about their marital and cohabitation status at the time of that first birth. These data are unique across federal surveys and allow a portrait of the shifting demographics of first births for American women across multiple decades.