Search results

Heide M Jackson, Michael S Rendall, University of Maryland - 2022-001

Angela Greulich, Sciences Po, Paris; Michael S. Rendall, University of Maryland; 2021-005

Current Census estimates place its population at a 100-year low

Michael S. Rendall and Monica L. Caudillo examine reproductive readiness in U.S. Women’s Postpartum Non-Use of Contraception

A focus of research on short interpregnancy intervals (IPI) has been on young disadvantaged women whose births are likely to be unintended. Later initiation of family formation in the United States and other high-income countries points to the need to also consider a woman’s attributes indicative of readiness for purposefully accelerated family formation achieved through short IPIs. We test for whether factors indicating “reproductive readiness”—including being married, being older, and having just had a first birth or a birth later than desired—predict a woman’s non-use of contraception in the postpartum months. We also test for whether this contraceptive non-use results explicitly from wanting to become pregnant again. The data come from the 2012–2015 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, representing women who recently gave birth in any of 35 U.S. states and New York City ( N  = 120,111). We find that these reproductive-readiness factors are highly predictive of women’s postpartum non-use of contraception because of a stated desire to become pregnant and are moderately predictive of contraceptive non-use without an explicit pregnancy intention. We conclude that planning for, or ambivalently risking, a short IPI is a frequent family-formation strategy for women whose family formation has been delayed. This is likely to become increasingly common as family formation in the United States is initiated later in the reproductive life course.

Michael S. Rendall, University of Maryland; Margaret M. Weden, RAND Corp.; Joey Brown, Polina Zvavitch, University of Maryland; 2018-002

CISSM Global Forum - A Simulation Model of Partnership Formation and Fertility for Comparative International Research

Lucia C. Lykke, U.S. Census Bureau; Michael S. Rendall, University of Maryland; 2017-009

Michael S. Rendall, University of Maryland; Narayan Sastry, RAND Corp., and Lori Reeder, University of Maryland; 2017-001

Michael S. Rendall, University of Maryland and Rachel Shattuck, U.S. Census Bureau; 2016-002