Correlates of Nonmarital Fertility in the Philippines

Maria Midea M. Kabamalan, University of the Philippines
Lindy Williams, Cornell University

Nonmarital births have increased amidst slowly declining fertility in the Philippines. Based on published vital statistics data, nonmarital births comprise only two percent of all births in 1963 and in 2004, this increased to 22 percent. Moreover, relative to marital births, increases in nonmarital births are more pronounced over time. The ratio of nonmarital births to marital births is estimated to be two percent in 1963 (because there was hardly any nonmarital births reported at that time) but is estimated to be close to 30 percent in 2004. This paper examines correlates of nonmarital births in the Philippines using data from the national demographic surveys in 1998 and 2003. Our analysis will be informed by the previous work of Musick (2007), of Upchurch, Lillard and Panis (2002) and of Ventura and Bachrach (2000). Place of childhood residence, education, age at first sex are among the factors to be examined.