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Young Adults' Fertility Expectations and Events: Associations With College Enrollment and Persistence
Author(s) -
Raley R. Kelly,
Kim Yujin,
Daniels Kimberly
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of marriage and family
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.578
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1741-3737
pISSN - 0022-2445
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.00990.x
Subject(s) - fertility , persistence (discontinuity) , demography , educational attainment , national longitudinal surveys , cohort , national survey of family growth , dropout (neural networks) , psychology , school dropout , medicine , developmental psychology , gerontology , clinical psychology , population , political science , demographic economics , family planning , sociology , research methodology , economics , geotechnical engineering , engineering , machine learning , law , computer science
The analyses described in this article investigated the association between adolescent fertility expectations and college enrollment ( N = 7,838). They also explored the potential impact of fertility expectations and events on college persistence among 4‐year ( n = 2,605) and 2‐year ( n = 1,962) college students. The analysis, which used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort, showed a significant association between expectations for early parenthood and the likelihood of going to a 4‐year college or 2‐year college for both men and women. In addition, the authors found that pregnancies were associated with an increased risk of college dropout for women; however, if all of the estimated effect of pregnancies on the risk of dropout were causal, they would still not be a major factor contributing to educational attainment because fertile pregnancies among college women are so rare.