An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States

TLDR

The erosion of shotgun marriage in the United States is linked to abortion legalization and greater contraceptive access for unmarried women. The study proposes a technology‑shock hypothesis as an alternative to welfare and job‑shortage explanations for the feminization of poverty. Models compare women who neither use birth control nor abortion to hand‑loom weavers, illustrating how technological change leads to female immiseration, and the authors describe these mechanisms historically. The decline in shotgun marriage explains a substantial portion of the rise in out‑of‑wedlock first births.

Abstract

This paper relates the erosion of the custom of shotgun marriage to the legalization of abortion and the increased availability of contraception to unmarried women in the United States. The decline in shotgun marriage accounts for a significant fraction of the increase in out-of-wedlock first births. Several models illustrate the analogy between women who do not adopt either birth control or abortion and the hand-loom weavers, both victims of changing technology. Mechanisms causing female immiseration are modeled and historically described. This technology-shock hypothesis is an alternative to welfare and job-shortage theories of the feminization of poverty.