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Births to Unmarried Women
'Births to Unmarried Women' is the percent of all births in which the mother is not
married. In 1999, about three out of every 10 Arkansas women giving birth were
unmarried. Unmarried motherhood is frequently associated with being young, poor,
having relatively little education, and receiving poor prenatal care. As a consequence,
such women tend to have a greater incidence of a broad range of adverse reproductive
outcomes.
Births to Unmarried Women is calculated simply as a percentage of all births. In 1999,
there were 12,905 such births out of a total of 36,672. Therefore, the percent of Births to
Unmarried Women = (12,905 / 36,672) X 100 = 35.2 percent. As a comparison, the
United States percent of births to unmarried women in 1999 was 33 percent.
Births to unmarried women were highest in the Delta region of eastern Arkansas. For the
1995-1999 period, births to unmarried women were highest in Phillips County, with an
average of 68.1 percent of all live births being born to unmarried women. Grant County,
on the other end of the spectrum, averaged only 17.8 percent of live births to unmarried
women.
There were significant differences by Public Health Regions in the percent of births to
unmarried women from 1995-1999. The Southeast region had the highest average at 52.3
percent, while the Northwest region was the lowest with 26.3 percent.
Births to Unmarried Women differs significantly by race. About 74 percent of Black
Arkansans giving birth during 1995-1999 were unmarried. The percent was much lower
for White Arkansans, at 23.0 percent, both of these are a one percent increase from 1998.
In Arkansas, the long-term trend has been toward an increase in births to unmarried
women. In 1983, 21.9 percent of all births in Arkansas were to unmarried women. By
1999, this had increased to 35.2 percent.
Nationally, the percent of all births occurring to unmarried women rose from 32.8 in 1998
to 33.0 in 1999. The number of births to unmarried women increased three percent in
1998, the highest increase ever reported nationally, but only increased by four tenths of a
percent.
It should be noted that marital status is reported in reference to the pregnancy. A woman is
considered married if she is married at any time from conception to birth.
The reader should be cautioned that the percent of births to unmarried women is
influenced by several factors. These include the fertility of both unmarried and married
women, as well as their relative distributions in the population.
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