Decomposition of trends in nonmarital childbearing in rural and urban areas in Poland, 1985-2009

Anna Baranowska, Warsaw School of Economics

The aim of this paper is to decompose the increase in the share of out-of-wedlock births in Poland into a component attributed to the changing structure of conceptions according to the marital status before the birth and a component related to the dropping propensity for shotgun weddings. Shotgun weddings used to be quite common in Poland, so the proportion of out-of-wedlock births observed in this country would have been much higher than reported in the official statistics if it wasn’t for legitimating pregnancies among unmarried women via marital contracts. The results of analysis of data from Birth Register 1985-2009 show that a decline in propensity to marry among single pregnant women played an important role for diffusion of nonmarital childbearing especially in the last decade. In urban areas the impact of declining propensity for shotgun weddings was relatively larger than in rural areas. This is consistent with the notion that rural areas constitute more traditional context for family formation. It seems that in villages, the social pressure still prevents diversification of family forms to larger extent than in towns.