Overview
Lawrence L. Wu is a sociologist and demographer at New York University whose research focuses on family formation, nonmarital fertility, and the life-course consequences of family structure. He is a leading methodologist in the use of event-history and life-table methods applied to marital and fertility histories.
Key Contributions / Features
- Wu (1996) — "Effects of Family Instability, Income, and Income Instability on the Risk of a Premarital Birth," American Sociological Review 61(3): 386–406. Discrete-time hazard models on the NLSY showing that family structure instability during childhood, income level, and income variability all independently raise premarital birth risk. Key novel finding: income instability elevates risk beyond the income level effect. See Nonmarital Fertility.
- Wu (2008) — "Cohort Estimates of Nonmarital Fertility for U.S. Women," Demography 45(1): 193–207. Introduced the cohort nonmarital fertility ratio (CNMFR) using pooled June CPS 1980–1995 retrospective histories; documented the monotonic 50-year rise in U.S. nonmarital fertility across cohorts, its nonnegligible historical levels, and the qualitative race/ethnicity difference in type of nonmarital birth (post-separation vs. never-married). See Nonmarital Fertility.
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