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Voluntary Childlessness In The United States: Recent Trends By Cohort And Period, Laurie Chancey

LSU Master's Theses

Most large-scale studies on voluntary childlessness since the waning of the baby boom provide cross-sectional estimates for a single time period. They cannot be synthesized to estimate change because of the varied definitions used to operationalize voluntary childlessness. In this study, I use data from the 1973-2002 cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to estimate change in voluntary childlessness using a consistent definition by period and birth cohort. I find that voluntary childlessness stayed relatively constant through the seventies and eighties, but showed a large increase from the mid-nineties to 2002. I show that voluntary childlessness increased …