An Economic Profile of the Glenrothes Area - Home Page

4. Trends in Descriptive Statistics4.1. Prevalence of Child Adoption, 1880-1930 & 2000How common was adoption in the late 19th century? Did adoption become more popular in the early20th century in response to less stigma and wider social acceptance? Table 1 reports the estimatednumbers of biological, adopted, step, and foster children in U.S. households in 1880-1930 and 2000.Alaska and Hawaii are excluded from all years to maintain consistency across years. Although I includeNative Americans and Asians in the table, due to small sample size, estimates for these races areunreliable in early census years. Throughout this paper, child is defined as any person under age 18 (age0 to 17) residing in a household whose relationship to the household head is reported as “child,”including biological, step, and adopted children. I also include foster children in the table even thoughfoster child is reported (not as “child” but) as co-resident nonrelatives in IPUMS. 8 It must be noted thatthe child type is always defined in relation to household head, while the relationship between a childand a spouse of the household head is not directly identified. For example, consider the case of marriedtwo-parent households with children. In 1880-1930, in virtually all such households the household headis children’s father and not mother. In these households, children are labeled “biological” if they have abiological father, regardless of their relationship to a mother. Thus, in our definition, biological childreninclude not only children who have two birth parents but also those who have a biological father and astepmother. Similarly, children are labeled “adopted” when they have an adoptive father even if theirmother is a biological or step mother. As a result, adopted children in our definition include adoptedstepchildren (as in the case of a remarried husband adopting his wife’s biological children from herprevious marriage). 9 Accordingly, step children in our definition exclude children of a biological fatherand a stepmother. Because our definitions of biological and adopted children overlap with“stepchildren” in its common usage of the term, for comparison, I keep step children (in our definition)as a child type throughout the paper.According to Table 1, in 1880-1930, on average 0.26% of white children under age 18 in allhouseholds were adopted, compared to 2.2% in 2000. Although 0.26% may seem small, given the factthat even in 2000 when adoption seems ubiquitous the adopted children were only 2% of all children, itshows that adoption was surprisingly common in the earlier period. I find, however, no positive trend inthe share of adopted children from 1880 to 1930 among whites. This could be that the literature’semphasis on a rising demand for agency adoption has been misplaced or that such increase was offset8 Foster children refer to children who are temporarily cared for by foster parents while their birth parents are unable toperform parental duties due to financial, medical, or emotional reasons. Unlike adoptive parents, foster parents do not assumeparental rights. Historically, however, these two concepts were not well differentiated.9 Note, however, that our definition of adopted children excludes those who are reported as a household head’s “adoptedbrother (or sister),” “adopted nephew (or niece),” and “adopted grandson (or granddaughter)” even if they are under age 18.6