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Title: Expectations of Adult Wages and Teenage Childbearing
Resulting in 1 citation.
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McCrate, Elaine |
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Expectations of Adult Wages and Teenage Childbearing Presented: Bethesda, MD, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", May 1992 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Childbearing; Childbearing, Adolescent; Family Background and Culture; Mothers; Regions; Religion; Sex Education; Sex Roles; Teenagers; Wages, Adult; Welfare Teenage mothers typically experience lower adult earnings than other women. Conventional wisdom has emphasized a one-way causal relationship, with teenage childbearing accounting in large measure for low incomes later in life. According to this logic, adolescent mothers make irrational choices, or perhaps exceptionally poorly informed ones: in either case, their decisions ultimately undermine their future economic well-being. Many empirical studies have investigated in detail the hypothesis that teenage childbearing reduces adult earnings and employment opportunity, generally concluding, emphatically, that it does. In this paper I investigate the second opportunity cost hypothesis: whether the expectation of low adult wages increases the probability of adolescent childbearing. I develop a model in which education, wages, and adolescent motherhood are jointly determined, and test it using data from the 1986 cross-section of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. |
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Bibliography Citation
McCrate, Elaine. "Expectations of Adult Wages and Teenage Childbearing." Presented: Bethesda, MD, NICHD Conference, "Outcomes of Early Childbearing: An Appraisal of Recent Evidence", May 1992. |