Three Essays on the Interrelationships between Socioeconomic Resources, Family Formation, and Child Wellbeing

Fueled by social, cultural, and economic change, nearly all aspects of family life shifted over the past five decades. Such wide-ranging transformation has implications for the determinants of family formation and parenting in contemporary periods. In this dissertation, I examine three facets of family life: nonmarital childbearing, marriage among cohabitors, and the relationship between parenting and child wellbeing.;The first chapter uses data from two recent cohorts of young women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine how the relationship between women's socioeconomic status and having a child outside of marriage has changed across cohorts. Despite striking growth in the prevalence of nonmarital childbearing across cohorts, I find that nonmarital childbearing continues to be concentrated among less-advantaged women. In contrast to prior work, however, I also find that women's economic opportunities are increasingly important for nonmarital childbearing.;The second chapter draws on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort to investigate how men's and women's economic trajectories influence the transition to marriage among cohabitors. I find that growth in earnings and increased schooling hastens the transition to marriage, whereas a loss in earnings or employment encourages separation. The relationship between economic status and marriage varies little across gender and parental status, though the associations are more consistent among men and especially, fathers. The results of this study provide further evidence that having limited economic resources presents a significant barrier to marriage.;The third chapter examines how maternal education shapes parenting behaviors in ways that have meaningful consequences for children's behavioral and cognitive development. Using data from the Fragile Families Study, I find that the combined higher-quality parenting and higher family income associated with maternal education explains a significant portion of the gaps in children's wellbeing. The results of this study suggest that improving family incomes alone will not alleviate disparities in children's wellbeing.;Taken together, the results of these studies highlight the central role of economic resources for family formation and parenting behaviors, yet they also demonstrate the significance of education above and beyond the monetary rewards with which it is correlated.