Anna Aizer - Brown University, Dept of Economics

Grandparents, Moms or Dads? Why Children of Teen Mothers Do Worse in Life

    Date:  10/25/2018 (Thu)

    Time:  3:30pm- 5:00pm

    Location:  Seminar will be held on-site: Gross Hall 270

    Organizer:  Manoj Mohanan, Ph.D.

Meeting Schedule: Login or email the organizer to schedule a meeting.

    All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.

    8:30am - Breakfast- Manoj Mohanan and Marcos Rangel

   10:00am - OPEN

   10:30am - Emma Zang

   11:00am - Allison Stolte

   11:30am - Angie O'Rand

   12:00pm - Lunch- Luiza Perez, Nivedhitha Subramanian, Jonathan Moreno

    1:00pm - Romina Tome

    1:30pm - Laura Bellows

    2:00pm - Christina Gibson-Davis

    2:30pm - Duncan Thomas

    3:00pm - Seminar Prep

    3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (3:30pm to 5:00pm)

    5:30pm - Dinner - timing is v tight, please contact Manoj if you'd like to join

    Additional Comments:  Women who give birth as teens have worse subsequent educational and labor market outcomes than women who have first births at older ages. However, previous research has attributed much of these effects to selection rather than a causal effect of teen childbearing. Despite this, there are still reasons to believe that children of teen mothers may do worse as their mothers may be less mature, have fewer financial resources when the child is young, and may partner with fathers of lower quality. Using Norwegian register data, we compare outcomes of children of sisters who have first births at different ages. Our evidence suggests that the causal effect of being a child of a teen mother is much smaller than that implied by the cross-sectional differences but that there are still significant long-term, adverse consequences, especially for children born to the youngest teen mothers. Unlike previous research, we have information on fathers and find that negative selection of fathers of children born to teen mothers plays an important role in producing inferior child outcomes. These effects are particularly large for mothers from higher socio-economic groups.