Adoption, as an alternative to child bearing, is a widely accepted means of forming a family in the United States. Today, adopted children comprise roughly 2.5 percent of all children in this country, and more than 20,000 children are adopted from abroad by Americans each year. Data suggest that the U.S. adopts more children per capita than any other country in the world, yet reportedly there still is large unmet demand for adoption. What is driving this demand for adoptable children? Who adopts children? Who places children for adoption? What are the characteristics of children who are placed for adoption? How is the number of adoptions changing in the U.S.? Despite its quantitative significance and potentially important welfare implications for the families involved, child adoption has received surprisingly little attention from economists.
This research project provides the first systematic economic analysis of child adoption in the U.S. It starts by documenting historical trends since the 1950s by adoption types, e.g., related and unrelated adoptions, domestic and international adoptions, and exploring whether these trends can be explained by changes in key demographic, social, and economic variables. Among other things, the historical data show that foster-care adoptions and international adoptions as a fraction of total adoptions in the U.S. have been increasing since the 1980s. Subsequently, using two complementary datasets, this research investigates what determines the demand for and supply of adoptable children by estimating the effects of various socio-demographic characteristics of individuals on the likelihood of adopting and relinquishing children for adoption. Finally, this project develops a theoretical framework to study adoption seeking, in which adoption is explicitly modeled as an alternative to child bearing. This model is fit to basic features of adoption and fertility in the U.S. and then used to simulate the effects of various changes that affect decisions by women. For example, the project estimates the impacts of changes in adoption laws, progress in reproductive technology, and changes in the labor market and marriage patterns on the number and the type of adoption.
The intellectual merits of the project are twofold. Empirically, this research advances the understanding of the demand for and supply of adoptable children using rigorous statistical analysis and new data sources. Theoretically, through providing the first formal model of adoption seeking, this research makes it possible to analyze the effects of different policy interventions on adoption and fertility decisions and assess their relative merits and welfare implications. The broader impacts of this project include the promotion of collaboration among scholars, government officials, and other practitioners working on child adoption and the provision of policy recommendations concerning legal and institutional reforms related to child adoption.
