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Title: Does Young Maternal Age Adversely Affect Child Development? Evidence from Cousin Comparisons
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Geronimus, Arline T.
Korenman, Sanders D.
Hillemeier, Marianne M.
Does Young Maternal Age Adversely Affect Child Development? Evidence from Cousin Comparisons
Presented: Bethesda, MA, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", May 1992
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; All-Volunteer Force (AVF); Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Bias Decomposition; Birthweight; Child Development; Child Health; Family Influences; Fertility; First Birth; General Assessment; Heterogeneity; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Marital Status; Mothers; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Siblings; Teenagers; Verbal Memory (McCarthy Scale)

We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979-1988 to estimate relations between maternal age at first birth and measures of early socioemotional and cognitive development of children. We compare cross-sectional estimates to estimates based on comparisons of first cousins to gauge the importance of bias from family background heterogeneity. Cross-sectional estimates suggest moderate adverse consequences of teen motherhoo for child development. However, children of teen mothers appear to score no worse on measures of development than first cousins whose mothers had first births after their teen years. The evidence suggests that differences in far background of mothers (factors that precede their childbearing years) account for the low scores on measures of socioemotional and cognitive development seen in young children of teen mothers.
Bibliography Citation
Geronimus, Arline T., Sanders D. Korenman and Marianne M. Hillemeier. "Does Young Maternal Age Adversely Affect Child Development? Evidence from Cousin Comparisons." Presented: Bethesda, MA, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", May 1992.