Abstract
Ermisch (2009) criticized Gray, Stockard, and Stone (2006), arguing that they incorrectly tested a model positing a nonlinear relationship between the nonmarital fertility ratio and the proportion of unmarried women. I identify a different problem, which is that even if this model were to hold for a particular population, it would not in general hold for subgroups of this population; likewise, were it to hold for subgroups, it would not hold for aggregations of these subgroups.
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References
Ermisch, J. 2009. “The Rising Share of Nonmarital Births: Is It Only Compositional Effects?” Demography 46:193–202.
Gray, J.A., J. Stockard, and J.A. Stone. 2006. “The Rising Share of Nonmarital Births: Fertility Choice or Marriage Behavior.” Demography 43:241–54.
Wu, L.L., L.L. Bumpass, and K. Musick. 2001. “Historical and Life Course Trajectories of Nonmarital Childbearing.” Pp. 1–48 in Out of Wedlock: Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility, edited by L.L. Wu and B. Wolfe. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
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Funding for this research was provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD 29550), which is gratefully acknowledged.
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Wu, L.l. Composition and decomposition in nonmarital fertility. Demography 46, 209–210 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.0.0044
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.0.0044