National Fertility Survey: Marital Fertility and Family Planning in the U.S.

The 1965 National Fertility Survey queried currently married women on residence history, marital history, education, income, employment, family background, religiosity, and attitudes toward contraception and family planning. It was the first of three surveys succeeding the Growth of American Families studies from 1955 and 1960. The 1975 survey added longitudinal data by re-interviewing 1970 respondents and expanded topics to include work history, family ideals, and women's rights.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the relationship between religiosity and contraceptive use based on religious practice questions.
• Studying the impact of maternal employment on family size ideals using work history and family attitude questions.
• Modeling fertility expectations and intentions against actual birth outcomes described in pregnancy histories.
• Examining intergenerational transmission of fertility norms using data on respondents' parents' and mothers-in-law's childbearing.

Strengths

• Open Access (green) license facilitates academic and non-commercial reuse.
• Longitudinal design of the 1975 survey, incorporating respondents from the 1970 wave, allows for panel analysis.
• Cross-platform presence on multiple dataset hubs signals established importance in the research community.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and exact file formats are unknown across all sources.
• Descriptions reference multiple survey years (1965, 1975) but it is unclear if this is a single combined dataset or separate entities, creating ambiguity.
• The last updated date is unknown, raising questions about data freshness and maintenance.

Provenance

Source

Charles F. Westoff, Princeton University

Collection Method

Survey data collection from currently married women in the United States.

Time Range

1965, with a longitudinal component from 1970 to 1975.

Geography

United States