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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: Denver, CO, Population Association of America Meetings, April 1992
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Bias Decomposition; Birthweight; Child Development; Child Health; Family Background and Culture; Family Influences; First Birth; General Assessment; Heterogeneity; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Marital Status; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Mothers; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT); Siblings; Teenagers; Verbal Memory (McCarthy Scale)

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

Data from the NLSY are used to estimate relationships between maternal age at first birth and measures of early socioemotional and cognitive development of children. The authors compare standard cross-sectional population estimates to estimates based on comparisons of first-cousins (i.e., family fixed effects estimates) in order to gauge the importance of bias from family background heterogeneity. Population estimates suggest moderate adverse consequences of teen motherhood for child development. However, children of teen mothers appear to score no worse on measures of development than their first-cousins born to women who had first births after their teen years. The estimates suggest that differences in family backgrounds of mothers (factors that preceded their childbearing years) can account for the low (measured) early socioemotional and cognitive development of 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: Denver, CO, Population Association of America Meetings, April 1992.