Long-term socio-economic effects of teenage motherhood in Britain: Are teenage mothers worst-off than their peers?

Abstract: Early childbearing is seen as a trigger to lower social and economic achievements. The differences in economic outcomes such as wages of teenage mothers in comparison with non-teenage mothers has however been seldom studied and the causality link is not straightforward. In particular it is unclear whether teenage mothers would have been able to achieve better socio-economic outcomes if they had not had a child in their teenage years. In this paper we use data from the 1970 British Cohort Study, we estimate long terms differences in wages at age 30, 34, 38 and 42 accounting for the potentially endogeneity of teenage motherhood. We find that teenage motherhood has a significant negative effect on gross weekly wages when comparing teenage mothers with any other women in their generation. The wage loss ranges between 16% and 32% and decreases over time. However, the wage loss is less important and sometimes non-significant when comparing with wages of mothers who delayed their childbearing. We conclude that there is little evidence of long-term effects of teenage pregnancy on wages of women in the UK. This study appears to support more policies aiming at reducing poverty and risky behaviours and encourage education than policies focussing directly on reducing teenage motherhood.