U.S. Women’s First Family-Forming Transitions to Cohabitation or Birth: Differences by Racial and Socioeconomic Disadvantage Challenge the Theory of the Second Demographic Transition

Which do U.S. women do first—cohabit, have a birth, or marry? At what age do they experience this first family-forming event? How do these patterns differ by race, socioeconomic background, and their intersections? We answer these questions using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) panel data on U.S. White and Black women born 1980–1984 and discrete event history models that treat the first of cohabitation, birth, and marriage as competing events. Our findings challenge Second Demographic Transition theory, which sees the rise of cohabitation and nonmarital births to flow from increased economic security and the resulting individualistic, nontraditional values. The theory thus suggests that more advantaged women—by race or socioeconomic background—would be most likely to cohabit or have a nonmarital birth. While our findings on cohabitation offer mixed support, our findings on births that are first family-forming events challenge Second Demographic Transition theory. Black women and women whose mothers had less education are more likely than other women to have a nonmarital birth as their first event, and to do so at a relatively young age, with some of these effects mediated by their family of origin household structure and income, high school grade point average, and school enrollment. In sum, although Second Demographic Transition theory suggests advantaged women would be most likely to have nonmarital births, we find that disadvantage—racial or socioeconomic—predicts having a nonmarital birth as a first family-forming event. Moreover, these births that are neither within a union nor preceded by a union are a majority of all nonmarital first births in the United States.