Analyses of the number of times married: U.S. women 1995-1996

Abstract

This thesis will analyze the number of times U.S. women marry. My hypotheses ask whether race, education, age, and metropolitan status affect the number of times women marry. If these variables differ across women, this will show that society does indeed influence what many people in the United States today would consider the most personal of choices. This number can act as a simple measure of the chaos and stability associated in a woman's life, which influences her wealth, fertility experiences inside or outside a marriage, employment, and mobility. Further when number of times married is used as an aggregate number for a cohort of individuals, it can be seen from a global perspective to indicate life course events for cohorts and their influence from and impact on history. The two sources that will be used are Cycle V of the National Survey of Family Growth (1995) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (1996). The methods used are descriptive statistics, two logistic regressions, univariate Poisson distribution and Poisson regression to model the number of times women marry.