Nonmarital childbearing is an increasingly normative pathway to family formation in the United States. In 2007, nearly forty percent of all births occurred to unmarried women. The rate of adolescent childbearing in the U.S., despite recent declines, is also high—nearly four times that of most European nations. Although it is widely assumed that early and nonmarital fertility carry high economic and social costs as evidenced through their association with poverty throughout the life course, little is known about their long-term consequences for women’s health. This presentation focuses on recent work by Kristi Williams and colleagues that uses longitudinal data from the NLSY79 and multivariate propensity score matching to inform the following questions: What are the effects of early and nonmarital childbearing on women’s health at midlife? What role do women’s subsequent marital and cohabitation histories play in mitigating or perhaps exacerbating negative health outcomes associated with early and nonmarital parenthood? Results suggest enduring negative health consequences of early and nonmarital childbearing, especially among black women. We find little evidence that subsequent marriage improves outcomes for women who have had a nonmarital or early first birth. Rather, our findings suggest that subsequent marriage may pose health risks to black women who have had an early birth.
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