Understanding the Fertility-Economy Link for Teenagers

了解青少年生育与经济的联系

• 批准号: 6921407
• 负责人: JEREMY ARKES
• 金额: $ 9.74万
• 依托单位: RAND CORPORATION
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-15 至 2007-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6921407
• 关键词: adolescence (12-20); age at pregnancy; behavioral /social science research tag; clinical research; contraceptives; divorce /separation; fertility; human data; induced abortion; longitudinal human study; low socioeconomic status; racial /ethnic difference; safe sex /sex abstinence; sex behavior; socioeconomics

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): During the 1990s, the economy strengthened and teenage fertility and the rate of sexual activity and the lack of contraception decreased sharply. Black female teenagers, who generally experienced greater relative economic gains than white female teenagers, had even greater declines in fertility, the rate of sexual activity, and the lack of contraception. These patterns suggest that there may be a link between the economy and fertility-related outcomes. In this project, we will combine state aggregate economic data with individual behavior data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from 1997 to estimate how changes in the economy affect fertility and its proximate determinants--the rate of sexual activity, contraception use, pregnancies, and abortions-- for all teenagers and across race/ethnicity. We will use a difference-indifference method to control for unobserved heterogeneity across states and generic factors that would influence teenage behavior across the country (e.g., Magic Johnson's announcement that he has AIDS). Previous researchers have examined the economy-fertility-outcomes link. However, besides using more current data that spans the build up to the peak of the business cycle along with the following recession, we make several contributions. Previous studies used narrowly defined economic measures (e.g., state teenage employment-population ratio) that are subject to sampling error from being based on small samples and subject to endogeneity in that exogenous fertility shocks could affect the economic measure. One of our contributions is to use (1) the aggregate state unemployment rate, which should hardly be affected by teenage fertility shocks and is less subject to sampling error than the measures used in previous studies and (2) a state employment growth rate based on the industrial composition of the state and national output growth rates across states. Another contribution is that we will perform simulations to determine how much the rates of sexual activity, lack of contraception, pregnancies, and abortions changed in the 1990s as a result of the economic changes, and we will calculate how much of the patterns for all teenagers and across race/ethnicity can be explained by the economic changes.

描述（由申请人提供）：在1990年代，经济增强和青少年的生育能力以及性活动的速度和缺乏避孕措施急剧下降。黑人女性少年通常比白人女性青少年经历更大的相对经济增长，其生育率下降，性活动率和缺乏避孕的情况更大。这些模式表明，经济与与生育有关的结果之间可能存在联系。在该项目中，我们将结合国家对1997年青年纵向调查的个人行为数据结合，以估算经济变化如何影响生育能力及其近端决定因素 - 性活动，避孕，怀孕和堕胎的速度 - 对于所有少年和跨种族/种族/种族/种族/种族。我们将使用一种差异诱因方法来控制各州的未观察到的异质性和一般因素，这些因素会影响全国的青少年行为（例如，魔术师约翰逊宣布他有艾滋病）。 以前的研究人员已经检查了经济性剥离效果链接。但是，除了使用更多的当前数据，这些数据跨越了累积到商业周期的顶峰以及随后的经济衰退之外，我们还做出了一些贡献。先前的研究使用了狭义定义的经济措施（例如，州青少年就业人口比率），这些措施受到基于小样本和内生性的采样错误的限制，因为外源性生育冲击可能会影响经济措施。我们的贡献之一是使用（1）总州的失业率，这几乎不应受青少年生育力冲击的影响，并且比以前的研究中所采取的措施以及（2）基于国家和国家产出增长率的工业成果的国家就业增长率少于采样错误。另一个贡献是，我们将进行仿真，以确定由于经济变化而在1990年代发生的性活动率，缺乏避孕，怀孕和堕胎的发生率，我们将计算出所有青少年以及各种种族/种族的模式的数量，可以通过经济变化来解释。