Variations in the Link between Relationship Status and Fertility by Period, Race and Class

Kelly Raley, University of Texas at Austin
Minle Xu, University of Texas at Austin

A recent report from the 2006-2010 NSFG indicates that 23% of recent births were to cohabiting women, up from the 14% estimated in the 2002 NSFG. This paper uses the 2006-2010 NSFG to investigate trends in differences in fertile pregnancy rates for single, cohabiting, and married women to see if the fertility rates of cohabiting women are increasingly similar to married women and dissimilar to single women. In addition, our analysis will consider variation by race and class. We find that that fertility differences by relationship status have not changed over time, but that cohabitation is more marriage-like fir Hispanic and “Other” women compared to NonHispanic White women, but that relationship status is less linked to fertility for black women.In addition, the difference between marriage and cohabitation is smaller for women with mothers with less than a high school degree compared to women with a high school degree