Age at First Childbirth and Later Poverty

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Abstract
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 is not clear. In this article, the effect of the timing of the first birth on the ratio of family income to the poverty threshold for the family (a measure of income relative to needs) is examined using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). All women were age 27 when studied. Direct effects were not hypothesized; rather, the effect of age at first birth was hypothesized 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 were 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. Results indicate that age at first birth affects the ratio of income to needs at age 27 among African Americans, Hispanics, and Whites; the effect is modest among African Americans but substantial among Hispanics and Whites. Age at first birth is found to affect poverty through the highest grade completed in school, women's earnings, and other family income among Hispanics. Age at first birth affects poverty through the number of children among African Americans. Finally, early childbearing affects poverty through family size, women's earnings, and the timing of first marriage among Whites.

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