Men who? Birth rates show trend.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Joe Stone For The Register-Guard

The title from the campy, lurid cover of Maureen Dowd's recent best seller - "Are Men Necessary?" - poses a provocative question intended to be tongue in cheek. But recent evidence suggests it may be a serious question on the minds of more and more women.

Since the early 1970s, birth rates among adult unmarried women (ages 20 to 39) have more than tripled for white women, rising to about 50 per 1,000 women per year, and increased by about half for black women, rising to more than 130 per 1,000 women.

Much of the public debate over rising birth rates among unmarried women has focused on the role of welfare and other public assistance programs in encouraging unmarried women to have more children - that is, on fertility, rather than on marriage. But this view appears to be wrong, based on a University of Oregon study that Jo Anna Gray, Jean Stockard and I are conducting.

Instead, our evidence indicates that women have changed their views about men and marriage, not so much about the number of children they want to have. Birth rates for both unmarried women and married women have increased since the early 1970s, but total birth rates for all women, regardless of marital status, have hardly changed at all.

If changes in fertility were a major factor in the rise in birth rates of unmarried women (or of married women), then why haven't total birth rates gone up, too?

This phenomenon is an example of Simpson's Paradox - usually illustrated, as told at Harvard, by the student who transfers from Harvard to Yale, thereby raising the average intelligence at both places

Simpson's Paradox appears to apply to trends in birth rates. Birth rates for unmarried and married women are up, but the total birth rate is not. How can that be?

The answer is, so to speak, average intelligence rose at both Harvard and Yale. The share of unmarried women rose from 25 percent to 50 percent since the early 1970s for white women and from 52 percent to more than 70 percent for black women. The decline in marriage rates alters the composition of those who choose to marry or remain unmarried, so that birth rates for both groups of women rise, even with no increase in total birth rates.

The women who now choose to remain unmarried or to postpone marriage have lower birth rates on average than those who marry, but higher birth rates than those who have typically remained unmarried in past years.

Consequently, birth rates of both unmarried women and married women rise as marriage rates fall, with no necessary change in the overall birth rate. Again, average intelligence goes up at both Harvard and Yale, so to speak.

Increases in the birth rates for unmarried and married women appear to be primarily because of declining rates of marriage, not to increases in fertility.

For many complex and interrelated reasons - including expanding educational and career opportunities for women, increased earnings for women, changes in family structure, and for some groups of women, fewer suitable marriage partners - more women now choose to either postpone marriage or remain unmarried entirely, with little change in the number of children they eventually plan to have.

We have not yet even fully recognized this fact, let alone addressed its causes and consequences.

Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson and others have emphasized a shortage of "marriageable" partners for women. Earnings for men at lower skill and education levels have lagged behind the average. Worse, for blacks, as cohorts enter their 20s, there are substantially fewer men than women, even without accounting for astronomical incarceration rates.

The income gap between have and have-not families, whether married are not, has widened in the last generation due to several factors. Among them: Men and women with higher education and incomes tend to marry each other.

Thus, while the overall poverty rate has been flat, the rate for children remains high and continues to increase. In the complexity of all these issues, this fact is clear.

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Joe Stone is W.E. Miner Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon.