Commemorating the 50th anniversary of
the National Longitudinal Surveys
NLS user since 2006
Our research using the NLS has found: (1) nonmarital fertility is associated with worse health in midlife among women, (2) subsequent marriage does not improve health outcomes for most women who have had a nonmarital birth or educational outcomes for their offspring by young adulthood, and (3) there are few health advantages for women of delaying teen births to young adulthood and (4) for women who have had an early nonmarital first birth, later marriage is associated with worse health at midlife than remaining unmarried.
The NLS was the best and possibly the only source of high quality data for our NICHD-funded project examining the consequences of nonmarital fertility on health and well-being across the life course and across generations. No other data source provides the same breadth and depth of longitudinal data on the family backgrounds and family lives of mothers and children /young adults across more than 30 years. The addition of the health modules has made NLS the premier source of data for understanding the health consequences of the rapidly changing U.S. demographic and family landscape.