Women’s Reproductive Patterns and Adult Mortality: A Life Course Approach

Naomi J. Spence, Florida State University

Increasingly, researchers are applying a life course approach to the study of health, examining how early life and young adult circumstances set into motion a range of events with long-term implications for well-being throughout life. Among women, fertility is a central element of the life course that shapes opportunities, attitudes, decisions, behaviors, and health. As part of a larger project using the National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women to investigate the relationship between reproductive patterns and later life health, this paper uses discrete time hazards models to (1) estimate the effects of parity and the timing of childbearing on the risk of mortality; and (2) understand how childhood and adult social, economic, health, and behavioral factors may work to influence the relationship between fertility and mortality risk. Past research implies the existence of a relationship. However, less is known about the mechanisms that link these two factors over the long-term.