Trends in Intentions to Remain Childless in the United States
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Trends in Intentions to Remain Childless in the United States Anna Rybińska1 Received: 25 April 2019 / Accepted: 23 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The purpose of this study is to describe population-level trends in intentions to remain childless (ITRC) among men and women in the United States in the first decades of the twenty-first century. We use a sample of 31,739 women and 24,524 men aged 18–44 from a cross-sectional and nationally representative survey, the National Survey of Family Growth. Our analyses utilize five of the survey’s cycles: from 2002 through 2015–2017. Trends in the unadjusted proportions of men and women who report ITRCare presented, along with predicted probabilities of reporting ITRCfrom multivariate regressions. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the prevalence of ITRC increased in the general population of men and women in the United States as well as among the youngest adults aged 18–24. If ITRC are realized, permanent childlessness rates could increase in the near future, contributing to the ongoing fertility decline in the United States. Further analyses uncover similarities and differences in the ITRC trends and correlates between men and women. Increases in ITRC among women are connected to changes in the sociodemographic composition of the population but ITRC increases among men are not connected to population composition changes. In addition, a positive education gradient is observed in ITRC among women but not among men. These variations in ITRCprompt a call for further research into gender and intentions for childlessness. Keywords Childlessness · Childbearing intentions · Fertility · National Survey of Family Growth
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1111 3-020-09604-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Anna Rybińska [email protected] 1
Center for Child and Family Policy, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Duke Box 90539, Durham, NC 27708, USA
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A. Rybińska
Introduction Fertility rates in the United States have reached record low levels of 1728.0 births per 1000 women in 2018 (Hamilton et al. 2019). In light of these historical declines, recent research has explored the potential causes of low fertility in the United States, including parenthood postponement and the impact of the economic recession (Matthews and Hamilton 2016; Schneider 2015). However, an alternative explanation for this trend: a potential increase in intended childlessness, has received less attention. Is it possible that Americans, instead of postponing parenthood, are rather increasingly developing intentions to remain childless (hereafter ITRC)? Existing empirical evidence on women indicates that ITRC are correlated with subsequent childlessness (Berrington 2004; Heaton et al. 1999; Rovi 1994). For instance, childless women who reported ITRC at age 24 were 4.5 times more likely to remain childless at age 45, and the as
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