Consequences of Teenage Motherhood on Children

Abstract

Children of teenage mothers fare worse than children of older mothers. In order to estimate a causal effect of teenage motherhood, we study a sample of teenage pregnant women and exploit miscarriages as a natural experiment that causes a delay in childbirth from age 19 to 21. We estimate lower and upper bounds and rule out negative consequences of teenage motherhood on early child health and education. One reason is that treatment and control groups are similar in terms of pre-pregnancy behavior and socioeconomic background. Another reason is that miscarriages have detrimental effects on parents’ use of mental health care.