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Title: Discrimination, Returns to Education, and Teenage Childbearing
Resulting in 1 citation.
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McCrate, Elaine |
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Discrimination, Returns to Education, and Teenage Childbearing Working Paper, Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, 1989 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: Author Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing; Childbearing, Adolescent; Discrimination; Discrimination, Age; Discrimination, Job; Educational Returns; Employment; Poverty; Schooling; Teenagers Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Widespread teenage childbearing among some subpopulations of U.S. women, particularly black women, has been taken as evidence of a "culture of poverty." According to this theory, the poor do not take advantage of existing opportunities, such as school and work, to improve their economic circumstances. Utilizing data from the NLSY, this paper provides an empirical critique of such a notion. It demonstrates that returns to education are lower among the women who become teenage mothers, and that these lower returns are not due to the birth itself. Rather, they are due to poor quality schooling or jobs. Hence, since education does not pay off for these women, this research questions a key assumption of the culture of poverty theory: that education is a viable means to economic betterment. The paper also concludes that premarket discrimination in schooling and discrimination in employment contribute to teenage childbearing, rather than deficient culture. |
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Bibliography Citation
McCrate, Elaine. "Discrimination, Returns to Education, and Teenage Childbearing." Working Paper, Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, 1989. |