IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dlw/wpaper/03-08.html

The Socio-Economic Effects of Teen Childbearing Re-Considered: A Re-Analysis of the Teen Miscarriage Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Saul D. Hoffman

    (Department of Economics, University of Delaware)

Abstract

In an important contribution to the literature on the socio-economic impacts of teen childbearing, Hotz, McElroy, and Sanders used a natural experiment based on the random occurrence of miscarriages. They concluded that teen childbearing was actually beneficial to the young women in terms of labor market outcomes and to the government in terms of net transfers. In a replication of their work, I identify a number of important errors that undermine their results. Correction and re-estimation with their data show substantially smaller impacts on income variables. Re-estimation with a new data set yields impacts that are smaller yet. The re-estimation generally does not alter the sign of the estimated effects, but does lead to a much more modest conclusion.

Suggested Citation

  • Saul D. Hoffman, 2003. "The Socio-Economic Effects of Teen Childbearing Re-Considered: A Re-Analysis of the Teen Miscarriage Experiment," Working Papers 03-08, University of Delaware, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:dlw:wpaper:03-08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://graduate.lerner.udel.edu/sites/default/files/ECON/PDFs/RePEc/dlw/WorkingPapers/2003/UDWP2003-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Saul Hoffman & Greg Duncan, 1988. "What are the economic consequences of divorce?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 25(4), pages 641-645, November.
    2. V. Joseph Hotz & Charles H. Mullin & Seth G. Sanders, 1997. "Bounding Causal Effects Using Data from a Contaminated Natural Experiment: Analysing the Effects of Teenage Childbearing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(4), pages 575-603.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jason M. Fletcher & Barbara L. Wolfe, 2009. "Education and Labor Market Consequences of Teenage Childbearing: Evidence Using the Timing of Pregnancy Outcomes and Community Fixed Effects," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(2).
    2. Dinand Webbink & Nicholas Martin & Peter Visscher, 2011. "Does teenage childbearing reduce investment in human capital?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(2), pages 701-730, April.
    3. Adam Ashcraft & Kevin Lang, 2006. "The Consequences of Teenage Childbearing," NBER Working Papers 12485, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Jason Fletcher, 2012. "The effects of teenage childbearing on the short- and long-term health behaviors of mothers," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 201-218, January.
    5. Webbink, Dinand & Martin, Nicholas G. & Visscher, Peter M., 2008. "Does teenage childbearing increase smoking, drinking and body size?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 888-903, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gordon Dahl, 2010. "Early teen marriage and future poverty," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(3), pages 689-718, August.
    2. Ana Nuevo-Chiquero, 2014. "Out-of-Wedlock Fertility, Post-Pregnancy Choices and Contraceptive Usage," Working Papers 2014009, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    3. Craig Gundersen & David R. Just & Fei Men, 2017. "Mothers' Within-Marriage Economic Prospects and Later Food Security: Does Marital Outcome Matter?," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 682-702, November.
    4. Anna Aizer & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2019. "Grandparents, Mothers, or Fathers? Why Children of Teen Mothers do Worse in Life," Working Papers 201908, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    5. Aline Bütikofer & Deirdre Coy & Orla Doyle & Rita Ginja, 2024. "The Consequences of Miscarriage on Parental Investments," CESifo Working Paper Series 11003, CESifo.
    6. Battistin, Erich & Chesher, Andrew, 2014. "Treatment effect estimation with covariate measurement error," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 178(2), pages 707-715.
    7. Guido W. Imbens & Charles F. Manski, 2004. "Confidence Intervals for Partially Identified Parameters," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(6), pages 1845-1857, November.
    8. Mikami, Satoru & Furukawa, Mitsuaki, 2014. "An Empirical Study of the Conditions for Successful Knowledge Transfer in Training Programs," Working Papers 85, JICA Research Institute.
    9. Basu, Shubhashrita & Gorry, Devon, 2021. "Consequences of teenage childbearing on child health," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    10. Breen, Richard & Ermisch, John, 2021. "Instrumental Variable Estimation in Demographic Studies: The LATE interpretation of the IV estimator with heterogenous effects," SocArXiv vx9m7, Center for Open Science.
    11. Wolfe, Barbara & Wilson, Kathryn & Haveman, Robert, 2001. "The role of economic incentives in teenage nonmarital childbearing choices," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 473-511, September.
    12. Kerwin Charles & Erik Hurst & Alexandra Killewald, 2013. "Marital Sorting and Parental Wealth," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 50(1), pages 51-70, February.
    13. Andrew Beauchamp, 2016. "Abortion Costs, Separation, and Non-marital Childbearing," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 182-196, June.
    14. Kaplan, Greg & Goodman, Alissa, "undated". "Understanding the Effects of Early Motherhood in Britain: the Effects on Mothers," Economic Research Papers 269600, University of Warwick - Department of Economics.
    15. Boccanfuso, Dorothée & Larouche, Alexandre & Trandafir, Mircea, 2015. "Quality of Higher Education and the Labor Market in Developing Countries: Evidence from an Education Reform in Senegal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 412-424.
    16. Levine, D.I. & Painter, G., 2000. "The Costs of Teenage Out-of-Weblock Childbearing: Analysis with a Within-School Propensity Score Matching Estimator," Papers 74, California Berkeley - Institute of Industrial Relations.
    17. V. Joseph Hotz & Susan Williams McElroy & Seth G. Sanders, 2005. "Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences: Exploiting a Natural Experiment," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(3).
    18. Olga Yakusheva, 2011. "In High School And Pregnant: The Importance Of Educational And Fertility Expectations For Subsequent Outcomes," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 810-837, July.
    19. Pamela Smock, 1993. "The economic costs of marital disruption for Young Women over the past two decades," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 30(3), pages 353-371, August.
    20. B. Piedad Urdinola & Carlos Ospino, 2015. "Long-term consequences of adolescent fertility: The Colombian case," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 32(55), pages 1487-1518.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dlw:wpaper:03-08. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Saul Hoffman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deudeus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.