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In all analyses, we find that teen childbearing plays only a small, if any, causal role in children's performance on standardized tests, reported use of marijuana, or fighting. Pre-birth characteristics of teen mothers, birth order, and family size are more important factors in determining this set of outcomes. For other outcomes, namely grade repetition, early sexual initiation, and truancy, the fixed effects and miscarriage analyses produce differing results. Teen childbearing has no sizeable or statistically significant results for any of our outcomes in the miscarriage analysis. However, the fixed effects results suggest teen childbearing is associated with grade retention in school, school truancy, and possibly with early initiation of sexual activity. We interpret these differing results to suggest that teen mothers share more in common with other young women who conceive, but due to miscarriage, do not carry their pregnancies to term than they do with their own siblings who delay childbearing. It is these commonalities that appear to drive the zero-order association between early fertility and several negative behavioral consequences for off-spring.

Using the large sample size made possible through an expanded adolescent sample, we use two econometric techniques to explore the causal impact of early-childbearing on subsequent child and adolescent outcomes. First, we use a fixed-effect, cousin-comparison analysis to control for unobserved family characteristics that may influence child outcomes. Second, we examine outcomes among children born to women who had miscarriages during their teen years. Because teenagers who have miscarriages are in some ways similar to teens who carry infants to live birth, miscarriage data allows us to further scrutinize whether delayed childbearing is associated with improved outcomes.

In both analyses, we find that teen childbearing plays only a small, if any, causal role in children?s performance on standardized tests, reported use of marijuana, or fighting. Pre-birth characteristics of teen mothers, birth order, and family size are more important factors in determining this set of outcomes. For other outcomes, namely grade repetition, early sexual initiation, and truancy, the fixed effects and miscarriage analyses produce differing results. Teen childbearing has no sizeable or statistically significant results for any of our outcomes in the miscarriage analysis. However, the fixed effects results suggest teen childbearing is associated with grade retention in school, school truancy, and possibly with early initiation of sexual activity. We interpret these differing results to suggest that teen mothers share more in common with other young women who conceive, but due to miscarriage, do not carry their pregnancies to term than they do with their own siblings who delay childbearing. It is these commonalities that appear to drive the zero-order association between early fertility and several negative behavioral consequences for off-spring. In the paper, we discuss the implications of these findings and possible social policy responses to adolescent parenthood.

In this paper, we use newly available data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to investigate the effects of early motherhood on academic and behavioral outcomes for children born to early childbearers. We find that early motherhood's strong negative correlation with children's test scores and positive correlation with children's grade repetition is almost entirely explained by pre-birth individual and family background factors of teen mothers themselves. However, early childbearing is associated indirectly with reduced children's test scores through its linkage to family size (and thus to child birth order). We find a different pattern in predicting fighting, truancy, early sexual activity, and other problem behaviors among adolescent and young adult off-spring. For these behaviors, maternal age-at-first-birth remains an important risk-factor even after controlling for a wide range of background factors and maternal characteristics. These results highlight the diverse pathways through which teen parenting might influence subsequent child well-being and social performance.

Some of the contributors examine policies designed to correct problems, while others look at the changing racial and ethnic composition in America and its implications for African-Americans, as other minorities surpass them in numbers and claim political, economic, and social attention. The late James Tobin has contributed a foreword to this important collection.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate recent changes in the prevalence of overweight within a nationally representative sample of children.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a prospective cohort study conducted from 1986 to 1998 among 8270 children aged 4 to 12 years (24 174 growth points were analyzed).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Prevalence of overweight children, defined as body mass index (BMI) greater than the 95th percentile for age and sex, and prevalence of overweight and at-risk children, defined as BMI greater than the 85th percentile for age and sex. The roles of race/ethnicity, sex, income, and region of residence were also examined.

RESULTS: Between 1986 and 1998, overweight increased significantly and steadily among African American (P<.001), Hispanic (P<.001), and white (P =.03) children. By 1998, overweight prevalence increased to 21.5% among African Americans, 21.8% among Hispanics, and 12.3% among non-Hispanic whites. In addition, overweight children were heavier in 1998 compared with 1986 (P<.001). After adjusting for confounding variables, overweight increased fastest among minorities and southerners, creating large demographic differences in the prevalence of childhood overweight by 1998. The number of children with BMI greater than the 85th percentile increased significantly from 1986 to 1998 among African American and Hispanic children (P<.001 for both) and nonsignificantly among white children (P =.77).

CONCLUSIONS: Childhood overweight continues to increase rapidly in the United States, particularly among African Americans and Hispanics. Culturally competent treatment strategies as well as other policy interventions are required to increase physical activity and encourage healthy eating patterns among children.