Nonmarital births and single mothers: Cohort trends in the dynamics of nonmarital childbearing

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Abstract
It is no secret that the proportion of births in the U.S. that are nonmarital has been rising steadily for the past several decades. But what about the proportion of women who have nonmarital births? How has it changed over time? There is, in fact, no necessary relationship between the two proportions; rather, the relationship reflects what we refer to as the dynamics of nonmarital childbearing over the life-course. In this article, we use new data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to describe the relationship between the two proportions, and the way this relationship has changed across birth cohorts in the U.S. We find that the proportion of women ever having a nonmarital birth has risen much more slowly over time than the proportion of births that are nonmarital. This finding implies that there are now fewer changes than in the past in a woman's marital status across births. Indeed, what appears most to distinguish recent cohorts of women who have nonmarital births is that they do not have a subse...
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