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Author: Diaz, Christina
Resulting in 5 citations.
1. Diaz, Christina
Fiel, Jeremy E.
How Young Mothers Manage: Is There Evidence for Heterogeneity after an Early Birth?
Presented: Boston MA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, May 2014
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Childbearing; Educational Attainment; Fertility; Heterogeneity; Income; Motherhood; Pregnancy, Adolescent; Propensity Scores

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The socioeconomic consequences of teenage childbearing have received much attention over the past 40 years. While some argue that teenage fertility substantially hinders women’s educational attainment and earnings, others claim that the socioeconomic prospects of these women are often limited regardless of early motherhood. Recent methodological advances have resulted in more plausible estimates of the effect of teenage childbearing, but these studies focus on average treatment effects and overlook systematic variation. We ask if there is evidence for heterogeneity in the effects of teen birth on educational attainment and income, and whether the sources of this heterogeneity are tied to the resources and attributes of young mothers. We use propensity score-based methods to assess effect heterogeneity, but go further to test theoretically relevant explanations of such heterogeneity. Our findings help identify the types of young women who are likely to struggle as mothers and help us learn how others succeed.
Bibliography Citation
Diaz, Christina and Jeremy E. Fiel. "How Young Mothers Manage: Is There Evidence for Heterogeneity after an Early Birth?" Presented: Boston MA, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, May 2014.
2. Diaz, Christina
Fiel, Jeremy E.
The Effect(s) of Teen Pregnancy: Reconciling Theory, Methods, and Findings
Demography 53,1 (February 2016): 85-116.
Also: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-015-0446-6
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; College Enrollment; College Graduates; Earnings; Educational Attainment; High School Completion/Graduates; Methods/Methodology; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Modeling, Instrumental Variables; Modeling, Logit; Pregnancy, Adolescent; Propensity Scores

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Although teenage mothers have lower educational attainment and earnings than women who delay fertility, causal interpretations of this relationship remain controversial. Scholars argue that there are reasons to predict negative, trivial, or even positive effects, and different methodological approaches provide some support for each perspective. We reconcile this ongoing debate by drawing on two heuristics: (1) each methodological strategy emphasizes different women in estimation procedures, and (2) the effects of teenage fertility likely vary in the population. Analyses of the Child and Young Adult Cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,661) confirm that teen pregnancy has negative effects on most women's attainment and earnings. More striking, however, is that effects on college completion and early earnings vary considerably and are most pronounced among those least likely to experience an early pregnancy. Further analyses suggest that teen pregnancy is particularly harmful for those with the brightest socioeconomic prospects and who are least prepared for the transition to motherhood.
Bibliography Citation
Diaz, Christina and Jeremy E. Fiel. "The Effect(s) of Teen Pregnancy: Reconciling Theory, Methods, and Findings." Demography 53,1 (February 2016): 85-116.
3. Diaz, Christina
Fiel, Jeremy E.
When Size Matters: IV Estimates of Sibship Size on Educational Attainment in the U.S.
Population Research and Policy Review published online (8 October 2020): DOI: 10.1007/s11113-020-09619-2.
Also: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-020-09619-2
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult, Young Women
Publisher: Springer
Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Family Size; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Siblings

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Children with additional siblings appear to fare worse on a variety of developmental and educational outcomes across social contexts. Yet, the causal relation between sibship size and later attainment remains dubious, as factors that influence parents' fertility decisions also shape children's socioeconomic prospects. We apply instrumental variables methods that treat multiple births (e.g., twins, triplets) and same-sex composition as natural experiments to test whether increases in sibship size have a causal effect on the educational attainment of older siblings in the U.S. We pool several nationally representative datasets, including the Child and Young Adult Cohorts of the NLSY79 and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to obtain adequate sample sizes for these methods. Although results indicate that the presence of an additional sibling has a trivial effect on the attainment of older siblings for most families (those with two to four siblings), a large penalty arises with the introduction of a fifth sibling. Our findings imply that the costs associated with sibship size are likely concentrated among the largest families.
Bibliography Citation
Diaz, Christina and Jeremy E. Fiel. "When Size Matters: IV Estimates of Sibship Size on Educational Attainment in the U.S." Population Research and Policy Review published online (8 October 2020): DOI: 10.1007/s11113-020-09619-2.
4. Diaz, Christina
Nobles, Jenna
The Intergenerational Production of the Health Gradient: Evidence among Immigrant Families
Presented: Washington DC, Population Association of America Meetings, March-April 2011
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Child Health; Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-B, ECLS-K); Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Height; Immigrants; Intergenerational Patterns/Transmission; Weight

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Our project has two aims:
1. To assess how early in life socioeconomic patterns in health among second generation children begin to diverge from the socioeconomic patterns in health among their parents.
2. To test competing hypotheses about the intergenerational mechanisms that produce a health gradient among children in the absence of a similar gradient among parents. Although many aspects of health could be considered, our study will emphasize height, weight, chronic health conditions, and activity-limiting illness. These measures are collected from both parents and children in both the ECLS-B and NLSY-97 data sets.
Bibliography Citation
Diaz, Christina and Jenna Nobles. "The Intergenerational Production of the Health Gradient: Evidence among Immigrant Families." Presented: Washington DC, Population Association of America Meetings, March-April 2011.
5. Fiel, Jeremy E.
Diaz, Christina
When Size Matters: The Influence of Sibship Size on Attainment
Presented: Washington DC, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2016
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, Mature Women, NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult, Older Men, Young Men, Young Women
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Family Size; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Siblings

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Children with more siblings fare worse on a variety of developmental and socioeconomic outcomes. Because socioeconomically disadvantaged children tend to have more siblings than their more advantaged counterparts, sibship size is considered a significant driver of intergenerational inequality. However, recent scholarship outside of the U.S. context has challenged these causal claims, arguing that effects of additional siblings on attainment are trivial. Such studies use multiple births as a natural experiment—where increases in sibship size are used to estimate the human capital accumulation among older children. We follow these recent developments (e.g. De Haan 2010), and use multiple births to isolate the causal effect of additional siblings on older siblings' educational attainment. We pool five nationally representative surveys in the U.S. to meet the necessary data requirements. Results indicate that the presence of an additional fourth or fifth child significantly decreases older siblings attainment between one-fourth and three-fourths of a year.
Bibliography Citation
Fiel, Jeremy E. and Christina Diaz. "When Size Matters: The Influence of Sibship Size on Attainment." Presented: Washington DC, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, March-April 2016.