{"id":567,"date":"2014-03-22T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T15:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/a-different-way-of-looking-at-unwed-parents.html"},"modified":"2014-03-22T15:01:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-22T15:01:00","slug":"a-different-way-of-looking-at-unwed-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/03\/a-different-way-of-looking-at-unwed-parents.html","title":{"rendered":"A different way of looking at unwed parents?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So over at Ann Althouse\u2019s blog,<\/a> 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. \u00a0And my first thought was this: <\/p>\n

Many of the reasons that are offered are specific to the history of the black community. \u00a0Legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination. \u00a0The loss of jobs in the 70s. \u00a0The willingness of men, but not women, to intermarry. \u00a0Men in prison.<\/p>\n

But the rates are high for Hispanics, too \u2014 who don\u2019t have this legacy of slavery. \u00a0So 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. <\/p>\n

So I\u2019d like to look this up \u2014 verify this hunch, and see if anyone\u2019s written about it.<\/p>\n

But before I got that far, I ended up with something different: \u00a0the CDC report<\/a> on vital statistics related to births. \u00a0So I took the table from page 69, copied it into excel, cleaned it up, simplified it, and got this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nBlack*<\/td>\nHispanic<\/td>\nWhite*<\/td>\nAsian<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Rate per 1,000 unmarried\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
women in specified group<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
15-44 years<\/td>\n62.6<\/td>\n72.6<\/td>\n32.1<\/td>\n22.9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
15-19 years<\/td>\n43.4<\/td>\n41.8<\/td>\n17.8<\/td>\n8.1\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
20-24 years<\/td>\n103.5<\/td>\n\u00a096.5<\/td>\n46.6<\/td>\n\u00a022.0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
25-29 years<\/td>\n91.2<\/td>\n113.2<\/td>\n47.8<\/td>\n35.2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
30-34 years<\/td>\n59.6<\/td>\n103.9<\/td>\n40.2<\/td>\n43.6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
35-39 years<\/td>\n29.7<\/td>\n57.6<\/td>\n21.8<\/td>\n30.1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
40-44 years<\/td>\n8.1<\/td>\n16.5<\/td>\n6.1<\/td>\n12.1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Percent of births to\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
unmarried women<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
All ages<\/td>\n71.6<\/td>\n53.5<\/td>\n29.3<\/td>\n17.0\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
15-19 years<\/td>\n97.3<\/td>\n87.2<\/td>\n84.8<\/td>\n80.5<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
20-24 years<\/td>\n87.4<\/td>\n66.6<\/td>\n54.8<\/td>\n45.5<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
25-29 years<\/td>\n67.2<\/td>\n47.9<\/td>\n24.1<\/td>\n18.0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
30-34 years<\/td>\n51.1<\/td>\n37.7<\/td>\n13.4<\/td>\n9.3\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
35-39 years<\/td>\n43.2<\/td>\n34.8<\/td>\n13.1<\/td>\n9.1\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
40 years and over<\/td>\n40.0<\/td>\n35.7<\/td>\n16.7<\/td>\n12.1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n* Non-Hispanic only<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

One section of the table that I didn\u2019t copy and format is the raw numbers themselves but here are the key figures, in total:
Blacks: \u00a0420,977
Hispanics: \u00a0485,166
Whites: \u00a0626,131
Asians: \u00a046,395
American Indian\/Alaskan Native are in there too, but their totals are small enough that the CDC doesn\u2019t calculate rates.\n
\n
So what do you make of this? \u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m not sure. \u00a0And now the kids are bugging me to get off the computer, so I\u2019ll have to continue this later! \n

UPDATE:
so the kids are playing outside now, and I\u2019ve gone back to the CDC tables. \u00a0The data is complex, and I don\u2019t really have the tools to analyze it easily (maybe it exists in excel form somewhere? \u00a0I don\u2019t know), but there are further tables which provide some historical perspective. \u00a0Teen births, among all groups, are down, and it\u2019s clear that the birth rate at older ages, both for unmarried and married women, is where the increase is at. \u00a0But the \u201cnon-Hispanic white\u201d rates are only shown since 1990 (this is page 70 \u2013 71 of the linked report), so it\u2019s difficult to draw many conclusions; rates for Hispanics and Blacks, as well as whites, including Hispanics, are shown since 1980.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I notice:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Interestingly, 1990 is something of a peak year: \u00a0for age 25-29, rates went from 81.4 to 105.3 and down to 91.2. \u00a0It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 so much so that the rates are actually higher for Asian women ages 35+ than their white counterparts.<\/p>\n

And Hispanics? \u00a0The same pattern: \u00a0the increase in unmarried birth rates is in the older ages.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s 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. \u00a0(See the original table above.)<\/p>\n

At any rate \u2014 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? \u00a0I\u2019m not sure the data shows that, since the fertility rate for unmarried parents is only one side of the coin \u2014 if the share of the population that is unmarried is increasing as well. <\/p>\n

But what is more interesting is that the growth is in older, not younger women. \u00a0What do you make of that? \u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So over at Ann Althouse\u2019s 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. \u00a0And my first thought was this: Many of the reasons that are offered are specific to the history of the black community. \u00a0Legacy of slavery, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA different way of looking at unwed parents?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"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\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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