NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State
University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
March 12, 1998
A North Dakota State University researcher who has just completed a study on the long-term financial consequences of birth timing says women who have babies in their teens will pay a particular price for their decision—a lower annual income, which may in time equate to a diminished net worth.
"There's something unique about having a child early that has a negative effect on a woman's lifetime earnings," says Margaret Fitzgerald, an assistant professor with NDSU's child development and family science department. "Even at age 60, the women in my study who'd given birth early had lower levels of income."
But from there the economics of birth timing remains murky for the group of women Fitzgerald studied, those born from 1919 to 1929. She was unable to show a financial benefit to postponing childbirth, when compared to having children during the normal child-bearing years. Her research involved both men and women in their 60s and 70s and focused on data from only one year, 1989.
For her analysis, Fitzgerald used birth categories that reflected the era from the 1930s to the 1950s, when the people she studied were having children. She defined early birth for women as those births occurring from ages 12 to 19; on-time (normal) births, from ages 20 to 24; and delayed births, after age 25. Men who became fathers from 14 to 22 came under the early birth category. On-time births encompassed the ages 23 to 27, and male "delayers" were those who became fathers at 28 or later.
Fitzgerald weighed such factors as employment and martial status, family size, place of residence, and income levels—all in order to predict wealth. She estimated income levels based on these criteria: age when first child was born; number of children; education level; stability of marriage; race; and whether the first birth was pre- or post-marital, a factor that proved irrelevant for this particular generation.
"I did a parallel analysis of men and women because I wanted to get into those personal dynamics, particularly for women," says Fitzgerald, who found that birth-timing doesn't seem to affect men as it does women.
Fitzgerald also found no statistical difference, in terms of long-term financial well-being, between those women who had on-time births and the delayers, but she says this finding may be the result of the group she studied.
"It didn't make a difference then, but it might among women of subsequent generations," explains Fitzgerald.
Prior to the 1980s, delays in childbirth typically accompanied traumatic national or international events, such as the Great Depression or World War II. Social scientists now believe that postponing childbirth may be more of a long-term trend and less influenced by adversity, as people focus first on career and then on family.
As part of her analysis, Fitzgerald used a computer model to create what-if scenarios from real-life situations. By changing several variables, she concluded that factors such as marital and employment status contribute positively to a woman's wealth. At the same time, current family size is a negative influence.
"The findings should really drive home the point to policy makers that education is important," says Fitzgerald, who offers policy makers something else to ponder: "What will it mean if delayers are retiring as their kids are entering college? Will the financial stability they've established be able to carry them through? These are questions I've started to answer, but more work needs to be done."
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Source: Margaret Fitzgerald (701) 231-8280
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136