Teen childbearing leads to lower educational attainment, lower income, & greater use of welfare for individuals who come from counties with better socioeconomic conditions

Heterogeneous Consequences of Teenage Childbearing. Devon Gorry. Demography, volume 56, pages 2147–2168 (2019). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-019-00830-1

Abstract: This study finds heterogeneous effects of teen childbearing on education and labor market outcomes across socioeconomic status and race. Using miscarriages to put bounds on the causal effects of teen childbearing, results show that teen childbearing leads to lower educational attainment, lower income, and greater use of welfare for individuals who come from counties with better socioeconomic conditions. However, there are no significant adverse effects for individuals who come from counties with worse socioeconomic conditions. Across race, teen childbearing leads to negative consequences for white teens but no significant negative effects for black or Hispanic and Latino teens.

V. Discussion

For teens from less educated and lower income counties and teens in minority groups, poor education and labor market outcomes are not a result of teen childbearing. Instead it is likely that teen childbearing is complimentary with poor labor market prospects and in these cases teen childbearing may encourage some young women in poor circumstances to get more education and attain better labor market outcomes than they otherwise would have.

It is important to understand this heterogeneity when targeting policy mechanisms directed at reducing teen childbearing. While previous work suggests that such policies may only have modest positive effects on teen outcomes, these results suggest that there could be large positive effects of reducing teen childbearing concentrated among teens who are relatively better off. However, teen pregnancy prevention policies will not help teens who come from poor socioeconomic backgrounds nor will they help black, Hispanic or Latino teens on average.

Thus, broad policies targeting all teen pregnancies may not help the populations that they intend to help most. Instead of focussing on reducing childbearing of poor and minority teens directly, results of this paper suggest that policymakers would be better off to first target the conditions that make teen childbearing an optimal choice.