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Title: Single motherhood and the abolition of Coverture in the United States: Non-Marital Fertility and the Expansion of Women's Economic Rights
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2017
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Abstract: Under coverture in the United States, a married woman relinquished control of property and wages to her husband. Many U.S. states passed acts between 1850 and 1920 that expanded a married womans right to her market earnings and to own separate property. The former were called married womens earnings acts (MWEAs) and the latter married womens property acts (MWPAs). Interest in the acts effects is growing. Prior literature examined how the acts affected outcomes such as women's wealth-holding and educational attainment. The acts' impact on womens nonmarital birth decisions remains unstudied, however. We postulate that the acts caused women to perceived greater benefits from having children within rather than outside of marriage. We thus expect passage of MWPAs and MWEAs to reduce the likelihood that single women are mothers of young children. We use probit regression to analyze individual data from the U.S. Census for the years 1860 to 1920. We find that the property acts reduced the likelihood that single women have young children. We also find that the de-coverture acts effects were stronger for literate women, U.S.-born women, in states with higher female labor force participation, and in more rural states, consistent with our predictions.
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Authors: Alshaikhmubarak, Hazem; Geddes, R R; Grossbard, Shoshana
Conference Name: ASSA
Publisher Location: Chicago, IL
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Family and Marriage, Fertility and Mortality
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