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Title: The Timing of Teenage Births and the Economic Returns to Education

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2014

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Abstract: Teenage mothers tend to have poor economic outcomes later in life. However, the girls who become teenage mothers come from less advantaged backgrounds than those who delay childbearing until later in life, making causality difficult to establish. This paper examines the effect of having a child during high school versus becoming a young mother, but one who has already finished high school. I compare the outcomes of girls who have a child in the end of their senior year of high school to a control group comprised of girls who give birth a few months later. I find that girls who give birth during the school year are 9 percentage points less likely to graduate from high school; however, this has little effect on their eventual labor market outcomes. Despite being much more likely to obtain a High School degree, the control group does not enjoy higher earnings later in life, and is not any more likely to be working.

Url: http://gatton.uky.edu/Units/Downloads/MoB_Kentucky.pdf

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Authors: Sandler, Danielle; Schulkind, Lisa

Publisher: University of California, Davis

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Fertility and Mortality, Gender, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other, Poverty and Welfare

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