A different way of looking at unwed parents?

Last updated on: March 22, 2014 at 3:01 pm by Jane the Actuary

A different way of looking at unwed parents? 2014-03-22T15:01:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

So over at Ann Althouse’s blog, a discussion on black families in poverty and some throw-away lines on the welfare state as the cause of the surge in unmarried parenting. And my first thought was this:

Many of the reasons that are offered are specific to the history of the black community. Legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination. The loss of jobs in the 70s. The willingness of men, but not women, to intermarry. Men in prison.

But the rates are high for Hispanics, too — who don’t have this legacy of slavery. So far as I understand, the rates for second-generation Mexican-Americans are far higher than their immigrant parents or, indeed, Mexicans who remained in Mexico.

So I’d like to look this up — verify this hunch, and see if anyone’s written about it.

But before I got that far, I ended up with something different: the CDC report on vital statistics related to births. So I took the table from page 69, copied it into excel, cleaned it up, simplified it, and got this:

Black* Hispanic White* Asian Rate per 1,000 unmarried women in specified group 15-44 years 62.6 72.6 32.1 22.9 15-19 years 43.4 41.8 17.8 8.1 20-24 years 103.5 96.5 46.6 22.0 25-29 years 91.2 113.2 47.8 35.2 30-34 years 59.6 103.9 40.2 43.6 35-39 years 29.7 57.6 21.8 30.1 40-44 years 8.1 16.5 6.1 12.1 Percent of births to unmarried women All ages 71.6 53.5 29.3 17.0 15-19 years 97.3 87.2 84.8 80.5 20-24 years 87.4 66.6 54.8 45.5 25-29 years 67.2 47.9 24.1 18.0 30-34 years 51.1 37.7 13.4 9.3 35-39 years 43.2 34.8 13.1 9.1 40 years and over 40.0 35.7 16.7 12.1 * Non-Hispanic only

One section of the table that I didn’t copy and format is the raw numbers themselves but here are the key figures, in total:
Blacks: 420,977
Hispanics: 485,166
Whites: 626,131
Asians: 46,395
American Indian/Alaskan Native are in there too, but their totals are small enough that the CDC doesn’t calculate rates.

So what do you make of this?

I’m not sure. And now the kids are bugging me to get off the computer, so I’ll have to continue this later!

UPDATE:
so the kids are playing outside now, and I’ve gone back to the CDC tables. The data is complex, and I don’t really have the tools to analyze it easily (maybe it exists in excel form somewhere? I don’t know), but there are further tables which provide some historical perspective. Teen births, among all groups, are down, and it’s clear that the birth rate at older ages, both for unmarried and married women, is where the increase is at. But the “non-Hispanic white” rates are only shown since 1990 (this is page 70 – 71 of the linked report), so it’s difficult to draw many conclusions; rates for Hispanics and Blacks, as well as whites, including Hispanics, are shown since 1980.

Here’s what I notice:

for non-Hispanic whites, the unmarried birth rates declined for teens, ticked up moderately for the 20-24 age group, and increased significantly in all other age groups, since 1990.

For blacks, with data from 1980, rates dropped from 81.1 (increasing to 90.5 in 1990) to 62.6 births per 1,000 unmarried women, in total. Interestingly, 1990 is something of a peak year: for age 25-29, rates went from 81.4 to 105.3 and down to 91.2. It’s only in the 35+ year age brackets that unmarried black women are bearing more children now than in 1980 or 1990, and for the 30-34 age group, they peaked in about 1990, dropped, and are nearly at that peak again.

For Asians, data is only available from 2012, but even in this short time period, unmarried childbearing rates at decreasing at younger ages, and increasing at older ages — so much so that the rates are actually higher for Asian women ages 35+ than their white counterparts.

And Hispanics? The same pattern: the increase in unmarried birth rates is in the older ages.

What’s surprising is that the high fertility rates for Hispanics in general mean that the unmarried fertility rates are, depending on age, about equal or higher for Hispanics than for blacks, even though the percent of total births to unmarried women figure is lower. (See the original table above.)

At any rate — does this mean that the percent of children born to unmarried parents is just a result of fewer babies born to married parents, so a movement in the other side of the ratio? I’m not sure the data shows that, since the fertility rate for unmarried parents is only one side of the coin — if the share of the population that is unmarried is increasing as well.

But what is more interesting is that the growth is in older, not younger women. What do you make of that?

Uncategorized

Previous Post

March 21, 2014

Just what Illinois needs . . . a millionaire's tax

Next Post

March 22, 2014 Vacation planning?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many times did Elisha multiply food?

Select your answer to see how you score.

4 2 1 3