Early Marriage, Premarital Fertility, and Marital Dissolution

Abstract

This research investigates the impact of age at first marriage and premarital fertility status on subsequent marital dissolution for both black women and white women first married between 1950 and 1970. Results, using multivariate proportional hazards models, indicate that (1) premarital births, but not premarital pregnancies, increase the risk of marital dissolution; (2) an increasing age at the first marriage reduces the risk of marital separation and divorce, but not monotonically; (3) blacks differ from whites in that they are less responsive to the effects of a premarital birth or a young age at first marriage in increasing the likelihood of marital instability; and (4) an older age a first marriage offsets somewhat the destabilizing effects of a premarital birth.