Male Fertility and the Intendedness Status of Births 1982-1998

Koray Tanfer, Battelle Memorial Institute
Penelope M. Huang, University of Washington

In this paper we document the extent and patterns of unintended fertility among adult men and examine the effects of having an unintended birth on the well-being of the father. The specific well-being outcomes considered are alcohol and drug use and depressive symptoms. The consequences of an unintended birth are assessed relative to the consequences of having a birth that was neither intended nor unintended, a birth that was intended, and having no birth during the observation period. We use data from the 1982-1998 rounds of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY) and the 1994-2000 rounds of the NLSY Young Adult surveys. The NLSY sample we use consists of men who were 14-21 years of age when they were first surveyed in 1979, and NLSY mothers' male children who were 14-23 years of age in 1994, when they were designated as the "Young Adult" sample.