Fletcher, Jason M., and Barbara L. Wolfe. 2009. “Education and Labor Market Consequences of Teenage Childbearing: Evidence Using the Timing of Pregnancy: Outcomes and Community Fixed Effects.” Journal of Human Resources 44(2): 303–325.
The question of whether giving birth as a teenager has negative economic consequences for the mother remains controversial despite substantial research. In this paper, we build upon existing literature, especially the literature that uses the experience of teenagers who had a miscarriage as the appropriate comparison group. We show that miscarriages are not random events, but rather are likely correlated with (unobserved) community-level factors, casting some doubt on previous findings. Including community-level fixed effects in our specifications lead to important changes in our estimates. By making use of information on the timing of miscarriages as well as birth control choices preceding the teenage pregnancies we construct more relevant control groups for teenage mothers. We find evidence that teenage childbearing likely reduces the probability of receiving a high school diploma by 5 to 10 percentage points, reduces annual income as a young adult by $1,000 to $2,400, and may increase the probability of receiving cash assistance and decrease years of schooling.
Jason M. Fletcher is an assistant professor of public health at Yale University. Barbara L. Wolfe is professor of public affairs, economics, and population health sciences, and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The authors thank an anonymous referee for comments that substantially improved the paper. They also thank participants at the Institute for Research on Poverty Seminar Series at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for helpful comments and Deborah Johnson and Ronice Copeman for excellent editing. Part of this research was conducted while Wolfe was at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. The authors take responsibility for all errors. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Because of restrictions on the use of Add Health data, the authors may share only their programming code. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524, addhealth@unc.edu.