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Author: McElroy, Susan Williams

Resulting in 9 citations.

1.	Fernandes, Ronald Ha, Inhyuck Steve McElroy, Susan Williams Myers, Samuel L., Jr.
1.	Black-White Disparities in Test Scores: Distributional Characteristics Review of Black Political Economy 43,2 (June 2016): 209-232. Also: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12114-015-9230-5/fulltext.html Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: Springer Keyword(s): Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Racial Differences; School Suspension/Expulsion; Test Scores/Test theory/IRT Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. This paper investigates the distributional characteristics of racial differences in mathematics achievement, with particular attention to the potential influence of unexplained, and possibly unwarranted, racial differentials in rates of school suspension. It is well known that black students consistently score lower than whites on achievement tests, on average, even after controlling for family and schooling factors. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort, we decompose the racial gap in mathematics test scores from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test-Revised (PIAT-R) into a component due to racial differences in underlying characteristics and another component that is unexplained by differences in measured characteristics. We account for the possible endogeneity of suspensions in our analysis and show that the portion of the racial gap that is unexplained differs between the top and the bottom of the test score distribution. Our results suggest that researchers should pay more attention to the problem of concentration of black students among those at the bottom of the distribution and their scarcity among those at the top of the test score distribution to better understand the factors that account for the observed disparities.
	Bibliography Citation Fernandes, Ronald, Inhyuck Steve Ha, Susan Williams McElroy and Samuel L. Myers. "Black-White Disparities in Test Scores: Distributional Characteristics." Review of Black Political Economy 43,2 (June 2016): 209-232.

2.	Hotz, V. Joseph McElroy, Susan Williams Sanders, Seth G.
2.	Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing for Mothers In: Kids Having Kids: A Robin Hood Foundation Special Report on the Costs of Adolescent Childbearing. R. Maynard, ed., New York: Robin Hood Foundation, 1996: 55-90. Also: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publications/working-papers/pdf/wp_95_2.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: The Robin Hood Foundation Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Age at First Birth; Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Childbearing, Adolescent; Earnings; GED/General Educational Diploma/General Equivalency Degree/General Educational Development; High School Completion/Graduates; High School Diploma; High School Dropouts; Maternal Employment; State Welfare; Welfare Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Final Draft: March 22, 1995. Not for citation or quotation without the permission of authors. In this Chapter,we examine the effects of the failure of teen mothers to delay their childbearing on their subsequent behavior and socioeconomic attainment We estimate these causal effects by exploiting an innovative evaluation design in which women who first become pregnant as teenagers but who experience a miscarriage are used to form a control group with which to compare women who have their first births as teens. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we find that many of the claims concerning the adverse consequences of the failure of teen mothers to delay their childbearing are not supported by the data. Over her early adult life, a teen mother is no more likely to participate in government sponsored welfare programs than if she had delayed her childbearing until she was an adult. Early childbearing does not appear to seriously reduce the labor market earnings of teen mothers relative to what these women would have attained if they had postponed their childbearing. If anything, teen mothers tend to earn more relative to comparable women who postpone their childbearing. On average, the households of teen mothers are no more likely to experience significant losses in the earnings of spouses than if they had delayed their childbearing. At the same time, we do find that early childbearing has some adverse consequences for teen mothers. In particular: Early childbearing significantly reduces the likelihood that teen mothers ever will obtain a high school diploma While teen mothers do have a higher probability of obtaining a general equivalence degree (GED), existing evidence indicates this credential simply is not comparable to a high school diploma in today s labor market. Women who fail to delay their childbearing until they reach adulthood are likely to spend substantially more of their lives as single mothers. This is especially true for women who begin their childbearing prior to age 16. Women who start their childbearing early are found to have from one-half to one additional child over their lifetimes Presumably, having more children places greater strains on a teen mother s time and financial resources. Finally, we investigate the extent to which teen childbearing and the failure to postpone births among teen mothers result in higher costs to government. We investigate what women who first became teen mothers in United States in 1993 would be expected to cost government in their greater use of the AFDC, Food Stamp and Medicaid programs and through losses in taxes they would pay. We find that: This group can expect to receive between $11.9 and $19.9 billion in public assistance benefits over their lifetimes. This amounts to between $72,624 and $121,360 per teen mother.
	Bibliography Citation Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing for Mothers" In: Kids Having Kids: A Robin Hood Foundation Special Report on the Costs of Adolescent Childbearing. R. Maynard, ed., New York: Robin Hood Foundation, 1996: 55-90.

3.	Hotz, V. Joseph McElroy, Susan Williams Sanders, Seth G.
3.	Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing for Mothers and the Government Chicago Policy Review 1,1 (Fall 1996). Also: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publications/working-papers/pdf/wp_95_1.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Fertility; Methods/Methodology; Welfare Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Reduction of teenage pregnancy rates is believed to translate into smaller AFDC caseloads and lower costs. This is one rationale states have used to institute "family cap" laws that block additional aid for women who become pregnant while receiving public benefits. Though the federal welfare bill does not contain a family cap provision, it does contain incentives for states to reduce rates of illegitimacy. Research has not proven conclusively that reducing illegitimacy and teenage childbearing will reduce costs to the taxpayer. This article examines teenage mothers and finds no significant effect on their earnings over time. Extending this analysis to apply to the probability that these mothers would require public aid, the authors cast doubt on any substantial savings in social costs from decreases in rates of teenage childbearing.
	Bibliography Citation Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Costs and Consequences of Teenage Childbearing for Mothers and the Government." Chicago Policy Review 1,1 (Fall 1996).

4.	Hotz, V. Joseph McElroy, Susan Williams Sanders, Seth G.
4.	Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences Journal of Human Resources 40,3 (Summer 2005): 683-715. Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4129557 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Keyword(s): Childbearing, Adolescent; Earnings; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Variables, Instrumental We exploit a "natural experiment" associated with human reproduction to identify the causal effect of teen childbearing on the socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers. We exploit the fact that some women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage and do not have a live birth. Using miscarriages as an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing on their subsequent attainment. We find that many of the negative consequences of teenage childbearing are much smaller than those found in previous studies. For most outcomes, the adverse consequences of early childbearing are short-lived. Finally, for annual hours of work and earnings, we find that a teen mother would have lower levels of each at older ages if they had delayed their childbearing.
	Bibliography Citation Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences." Journal of Human Resources 40,3 (Summer 2005): 683-715.

5.	Hotz, V. Joseph McElroy, Susan Williams Sanders, Seth G.
5.	Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment JCPR Working Paper 157, Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago, August 1999. Also: http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/jcpr/workingpapers/wpfiles/HOTZ_WPoriginal2-7-2000.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Joint Center for Poverty Research Keyword(s): Abortion; Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Educational Attainment; Family Structure; Fertility; Labor Market Outcomes; Labor Supply; Life Cycle Research; Mothers, Adolescent; Parents, Single; Poverty; Variables, Instrumental Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. In this paper, we exploit a "natural experiment" associated with human reproduction to identify the effect of teen childbearing on subsequent educational attainment, family structure, labor market outcomes, and financial self-sufficiency. In particular, we exploit the fact that a substantial fraction of women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) and thus do not have a birth. If miscarriages were purely random and if miscarriages were the only way, other than by live births, that a pregnancy ended, then women who had a miscarriage as a teen would constitute an ideal control group with which to contrast teenage mothers. Exploiting this natural experiment, we devise an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimators for the consequences of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (NLSY79). Our major finding is that many of the negative consequences of not delaying childbearing until adulthood are much smaller than has been estimated in previous studies. While we do find adverse consequences of teenage childbearing immediately following a teen mother's first birth, these negative consequences appear short-lived. By the time a teen mother reaches her late twenties, she appears to have only slightly more children, is only slightly more likely to be a single mother, and has no lower levels of educational attainment than if she had delayed her childbearing to adulthood. In fact, by this age teen mothers appear to be better off in some aspects of their lives. Teenage childbearing appears to raise levels of labor supply, accumulated work experience, and labor market earnings, and appears to reduce the chances of living in poverty and participating in the associated social welfare programs. These estimated effects imply that the cost of teenage childbearing to U.S. taxpayers is negligible. In particular, our estimates imply that the widely held view that teenage childbearing imposes a substantial cost on government is an artifact of the failure to appropriately account for preexisting socioeconomic differences between teen mothers and other women when estimating the causal effects of early childbearing. While teen mothers are very likely to live in poverty and experience other forms of adversity, our results imply that little of this would be changed just by getting teen mothers to delay their childbearing into adulthood.
	Bibliography Citation Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment." JCPR Working Paper 157, Joint Center for Poverty Research, Northwestern University/University of Chicago, August 1999.

6.	Hotz, V. Joseph McElroy, Susan Williams Sanders, Seth G.
6.	Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of California - Los Angeles, July 2004. Also: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/hotz/working_papers/teen.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Resources; School Dropouts; Variables, Instrumental Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. We exploit a "natural experiment" associated with human reproduction to identify the causal effect of teen childbearing on the socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers. We exploit the fact that some women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage and do not have a live birth. Using miscarriages an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing on their subsequent attainment. We find that many of the negative consequences of teenage childbearing are much smaller than those found in previous studies. For most outcomes, the adverse consequences of early childbearing are short-lived. Finally, for annual hours of work and earnings, we find that a teen mother would have lower levels of each at older ages if they had delayed their childbearing.
	Bibliography Citation Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment." Working Paper, Department of Economics, University of California - Los Angeles, July 2004.

7.	Hotz, V. Joseph McElroy, Susan Williams Sanders, Seth G.
7.	The Impacts of Teenage Childbearing on Mothers and the Consequences of those Impacts for Government Working Paper 95-10, Population Research Center, NORC-University of Chicago, Chicago IL, July 1996 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79 Publisher: National Opinion Research Center - NORC Keyword(s): Childbearing, Adolescent; Fertility; Mothers, Adolescent; Socioeconomic Factors; Teenagers In this chapter, we examine the effects of early childbearing on the subsequent behavior and socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers. To obtain reliable estimates of these effects, we use an innovative evaluation design in which teenage women who miscarried become a control group for comparison with teenage women who gave birth. Applying this design, we are able to sort out confounding factors that have led to common beliefs about the negative effects of teenage childbearing on the life prospects of the mothers and attempt to estimate the following set of causal effects: If young women who are "at risk" of becoming teen mothers are somehow convinced to delay their childbearing by two years, how substantially would their life prospects be improved and how much would this affect what the government spends overall on these woomen.
	Bibliography Citation Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "The Impacts of Teenage Childbearing on Mothers and the Consequences of those Impacts for Government." Working Paper 95-10, Population Research Center, NORC-University of Chicago, Chicago IL, July 1996.

8.	Hotz, V. Joseph McElroy, Susan Williams Sanders, Seth G.
8.	The Impacts of Teenage Childbearing on the Mothers and the Consequences of those Impacts for Government In: Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy. R.A. Maynard, ed. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, 1997: pp. 55-90 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press Keyword(s): Age at First Birth; Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Childbearing; Childbearing, Adolescent; GED/General Educational Diploma/General Equivalency Degree/General Educational Development; High School Completion/Graduates; Marriage; Mothers, Behavior; Socioeconomic Factors; Welfare There is growing concern in the United States about the number of children born to teen mothers and the proportion of these births that occur out of wedlock. A decade ago, the National Research Council concluded that "adolescent pregnancy and childbearing are matters of substantial national concern" (Hayes 1987, p. ii) and President Bill Clinton, in his 1995 State of the Union Message, asserted that teenage pregnancy is "our most serious social problem." Part of the concern centers around the plight of teen mothers. The everyday hardships of teen motherhood come into public consciousness through media attention to and the prevalence of teen childbearing throughout the United States. Furthermore, there is a strong statistical association between the age at which a woman has her first child and her subsequent socioeconomic well-being. For example, one finds that women who have a baby in their teens are subsequently less likely to complete school, less likely to marry (and thus have a par enting partner), less likely to participate in the labor force, likely to earn less in their jobs, and more likely to rely on various forms of public assistance than are women who do not give birth in adolescence.
	Bibliography Citation Hotz, V. Joseph, Susan Williams McElroy and Seth G. Sanders. "The Impacts of Teenage Childbearing on the Mothers and the Consequences of those Impacts for Government" In: Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy. R.A. Maynard, ed. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, 1997: pp. 55-90

9.	Hotz, V. Joseph Sanders, Seth G. McElroy, Susan Williams
9.	Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment NBER Working Paper No. W7397, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 1999. Also: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W7397 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Abortion; Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing, Adolescent; Educational Attainment; Family Structure; Fertility; Labor Market Outcomes; Labor Supply; Life Cycle Research; Mothers, Adolescent; Parents, Single; Poverty; Socioeconomic Factors; Variables, Instrumental In this paper, we exploit a 'natural experiment' associated with human reproduction to identify the effect of teen childbearing on subsequent educational attainment, family structure, labor market outcomes and financial self-sufficiency. In particular, we exploit the fact that a substantial fraction of women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion) and thus do not have a birth. If miscarriages were purely random and if miscarriages were the only way, other than by live births, that a pregnancy ended, then women, who had a miscarriage as a teen, would constitute an ideal control group with which to contrast teenage mothers. Exploiting this natural experiment, we devise an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimators for the consequences of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 (NLSY79). Our major finding is that many of the negative consequences of not delaying childbearing until adulthood are much smaller than has been estimated in previous studies. While we do find adverse consequences of teenage childbearing immediately following a teen mother's first birth, these negative consequences appear short-lived. By the time a teen mother reaches her late twenties, she appears to have only slightly more children, is only slightly more likely to be single mother, and has no lower levels of educational attainment than if she had delayed her childbearing to adulthood. In fact, by this age teen mothers appear to be better off in some aspects of their lives. Teenage childbearing appears to raise levels of labor supply, accumulated work experience and labor market earnings and appears to reduce the chances of living in poverty and participating in the associated social welfare programs. These estimated effects imply that the cost of teenage childbearing to U.S. taxpayers is negligible. In particular, our estimates imply that the widely held view that teenage childbearing imposes a substantial cost on government is an artifact of the failure to appropriately account for pre-existing socioeconomic differences between teen mothers and other women when estimating the causal effects of early childbearing. While teen mothers are very likely to live in poverty and experience other forms of adversity, our results imply that little of this would be changed just by getting teen mothers to delay their childbearing into adulthood.
	Bibliography Citation Hotz, V. Joseph, Seth G. Sanders and Susan Williams McElroy. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment." NBER Working Paper No. W7397, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 1999.

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