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This research aims to explore how childhood and adult socioeconomic circumstances affect the timing of first birth by age 37.

January 13, 2017PLoS ONEOpen Access

Life-Course Relationship between Socioeconomic Circumstances and Timing of First Birth in a Birth Cohort

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Longitudinal study examines first birth timing in a birth cohort influenced by socioeconomic factors.

This research aims to explore how childhood and adult socioeconomic circumstances affect the timing of first birth by age 37.
Longitudinal study of a 1972-1973 New Zealand birth cohort collecting socioeconomic data from age 3-32 and reproductive histories at ages 21, 26, 32, and 38.
Analysis of first live births using Poisson regression to calculate relative risks and confidence intervals based on socioeconomic characteristics.
Data from 978 of the original 1037 participants including comparisons across various age intervals for parenthood.
68.5% of men and 75.9% of women fathered or gave birth to a child by age 37, with disparities linked to childhood socioeconomic status.
Parenthood by age 20 was significantly associated with lower childhood SES for both men and women; those with higher adult SES at age 32 showed increased likelihood of motherhood between 32-37 (RR = 1.9, 95% CI 1.1-3.3 for high SES).
Higher education levels correlated with delaying parenthood, particularly after age 31 and increasing likelihood for women with high education to become mothers between ages 32-37 (RR = 1.7, 95% CI 1.1-2.6).

Roode et al. (2017) studied this question.

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