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Title: Teenage Childbearing and Poverty
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Moore, Kristin Anderson
Meyers, David E.
Morrison, Donna Ruane
Nord, Christine Winquis
Teenage Childbearing and Poverty
Presented: Bethesda, MD, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", National Institutes of Health, May 18-19, 1992
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at First Birth; Age at First Marriage; Childbearing, Adolescent; Fertility; Hispanics; Poverty

An association between teenage parenthood and subsequent poverty has been noted for several decades. However, because early childbearing is more common among women from disadvantaged backgrounds, whether teenage childbearing increases the probability of poverty over and above the risk due to background factors has not been clear. In this paper, the effect of the timing of the first birth on the ratio of family income to the poverty threshold for the family is examined using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. All women are age 27 when studied. Direct effects are not hypothesized; rather the effect of age at first birth is expected to be mediated by intervening variables including educational attainment, age at first marriage, family size, women's work experience and earnings, and the earnings of other members of the household. Structural equation models are estimated, taking into account background variables that affect both selection into early childbearing and the outcome variables in the model, and employing a variant of Amemiya's principle to deal with problems of censoring and selectivity. Results indicate that age at first birth has a substantial effect on the ratio of family income to the poverty threshold at age 27 among blacks, Hispanics, and whites, though the effect is particularly large among blacks and Hispanics. Age at first birth is found to have a significant direct effect on highest grade completed and number of children among all three race/ethnicity groups. In addition, age at first birth has a significant direct effect on age at first marriage among whites. These variables in turn affect family income and thus poverty.
Bibliography Citation
Moore, Kristin Anderson, David E. Meyers, Donna Ruane Morrison and Christine Winquis Nord. "Teenage Childbearing and Poverty." Presented: Bethesda, MD, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", National Institutes of Health, May 18-19, 1992.