Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for a sample of 2794 women observed between 1968 and 1993 are used to determine whether the impact of established sociodemographic determinants of the risk of a premarital birth has changed over time or varies by age in the US. Event history analyses show that the risk of a premarital birth is greater for Black women and Latinas than for White women and non-Latinas. Moreover the incidence of premarital birth declines with the socioeconomic status of the family of origin is greater for women growing up in a mother-only family increases with neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and is higher in metropolitan areas and in areas outside the South. Overtime the racial difference in the risk of premarital birth has reduced patterns that cannot be associated to changing racial differentials in family background and characteristics or geographic location. By contrast the difference in premarital childbearing risks between Latinas and non-Latinas has widened. The inverse effect of childhood family income on the risk of women of premarital births weakens significantly as women age.
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Scott J. South (1999) studied this question.