Teenage mothers and the next generation: benefits of delay?

This paper investigates whether delaying motherhood beyond the teenage years benefits children. We account for selection into teenage motherhood in two parallel ways: We compare children with their cousins and we exploit miscarriages as a natural experiment that induces some women to postpone childb...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Review of economics of the household 2024-06, Vol.22 (2), p.451-476
Main Authors: Johansen, Eva Rye, Nielsen, Helena Skyt, Verner, Mette
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent mothers
Age
Childbirth & labor
Children
Children & youth
Economics
Economics and Finance
Families & family life
Fertility
Health status
Labor Economics
Microeconomics
Miscarriage
Mothers
Population Economics
Relatives
Siblings
Social Sciences
Teenage parents
Teenage pregnancy
Women
Womens health
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Summary:This paper investigates whether delaying motherhood beyond the teenage years benefits children. We account for selection into teenage motherhood in two parallel ways: We compare children with their cousins and we exploit miscarriages as a natural experiment that induces some women to postpone childbirth. Across the two strategies, we find no or limited effects of teenage motherhood on children’s health and educational outcomes. When we use women delaying motherhood to their early twenties as a counterfactual for teenage mothers, we show suggestive evidence that the effects of such delays are nil across outcomes for both strategies.
ISSN:1569-5239
1573-7152
DOI:10.1007/s11150-023-09670-w