Family structure and economic opportunities.

Abstract

This dissertation explores interactions between family structure and the economic opportunities and government programs faced by women. Chapter 1, Murphy Brown Revisited: Human Capital, Search, and Nonmarital Childbearing among Educated Women, develops and tests a search model of marriage and fertility decisions that explicitly accounts for the possibility of a nonmarital birth, as well as for the finite nature of the biological clock. I use Vital Statistics Natality Data and Census data to test the model's predictions for women in the United States between 1980 and 1990. For less-educated women, I show that worsening marriage market conditions are important. For college-educated women, I find that the finite nature of fertility is crucial, leading to significant increases in nonmarital childbearing propensities among women over the age of 35. The model proposed in Chapter 1 assumes perfect fertility control. However, women are not perfectly able to prevent unwanted pregnancies, nor are they always able to conceive when a pregnancy is desired. Given this uncertainty, women's risk preferences might be expected to play an important role in marriage and fertility timing decisions. In Chapter 2, Planning for Parenthood: Effects of Imperfect Fertility Control and Risk Aversion on Women's Choices. In this paper, I use survey questions in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics designed to measure relative risk aversion to examine the role of risk preferences in women's choices regarding marriage and fertility timing. I find evidence that measured risk preferences significantly affect women's marriage timing. In addition, results suggest that risk preferences have an independent effect on fertility timing, and that this effect varies by age, marital status, and education. Chapter 3, AFDC, SSI, And Welfare Reform Aggressiveness: Caseload Reductions Vs. Caseload Shifting, uses pooled cross-sectional data from the 1986 to 1996 Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine whether reforms to the AFDC program that have made receipt of cash benefits more difficult for single mothers affected caseloads of the SSI program. Variation in state welfare reform over time shows that female-headed households in states pursuing welfare reform were 21.6 percent more likely to receive SSI.