Teenage motherhood, education, and labor market outcomes of the mother: Evidence from Brazilian data

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of teenage motherhood on later educational and labor market achievement of the mothers. We construct a pseudo panel from the Brazilian Household Surveys (the 1992–2004 PNADs) and from the Health Ministry data (DATASUS 1981–1992) by state of birth and cohort. We find that the effects of teenage pregnancy are much stronger for high school completion and labor market participation than for schooling or wages. A reduction in teenage pregnancy by one standard deviation explains (i) 9.2% of the increase in high school completion and (ii) 5.4% of the increase in women's labor market participation, as observed over 10 cohort years. Lifecycle results show that the gains in terms of high school education are greater for younger than for older women, suggesting that women who give birth as teenagers tend to catch up with high school education while young but not as they become older. The results on labor market participation show persistent teenage motherhood effects.

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