Adult outcomes of teen mothers across birth cohorts

AbstractBACKGROUNDTeen and young adult mothers have lower socioeconomic status than older mothers.OBJECTIVEThis study analyzes the socioeconomic status (SES) of teen, young adult, and older adult mothers across four five-year birth cohorts from 1956 to 1975 who were teens from 1971 to 1994.METHODSData were pooled from the 1995, 2002, and 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Mothers were categorized by age at first birth and by their birth cohorts. The SES (education, single motherhood, poverty, employment) of teen, young adult, and older mothers was compared across cohorts and within cohorts.RESULTSAmong teen mothers, the odds of fulltime employment improved across birth cohorts and the odds of educational attainment beyond high school did not vary. Their odds of single motherhood and living in poverty increased across cohorts. The odds of higher education and single motherhood increased across birth cohorts for young adult mothers as did the odds of living in poverty, even if working fulltime. Among older adult mothers, educational attainment and the odds of single motherhood rose for recent cohorts.CONCLUSIONSComparisons between teen mothers and both young adult and all adult mothers within cohorts suggest that gaps in single motherhood and poverty between teen and adult mothers have widened over time, to the detriment of teen mothers. Teen mothers have become more likely to be single and poor than in the past and compared to older mothers.1. BackgroundAge at first birth and adult outcomesTeen birth rates have decreased over time, but rates are still much higher in the U.S. than in other developed countries. The proportion of births to teens has also declined (National Center for Health Statistics 2012, Martin et al. 2013).In adulthood, teen mothers differ on various socioeconomic measures from women who delayed childbearing. Teen mothers are less likely to finish high school and attend college than older mothers (Hoffman 2006, Jones et al. 1999, Lee 2010). Because poverty is strongly associated with education, the greater risk that teen mothers face of low educational attainment suggests that they are also at greater risk for poverty. Adult employment also varies for teen and older mothers. Teen mothers are less likely to be working and to be working full-time than are women who were not teen mothers (Lee 2010). However, whether teen mothers are worse off as adults than slightly older mothers is not clear. Some work suggests that they are not worse off on measures such as marital status, wages, and poverty (Hotz, McElroy, and Sanders 2005). Other work suggests that teen mothers are more likely to receive benefits, be less educated, and be a single parent than women who were 20-22 at first birth (Hobcraft and Kiernan 2001).Research questionsThis study focuses on the adult situations of mothers whose first birth occurred during their teens, early twenties, or afterwards between these groups and across birth cohorts. The causal pathways and mechanisms of adult outcomes are not a focus of this study. This study first asks whether the adult SES of women who became mothers at different ages has differed across birth cohorts; that is, are the adult lives of teen, young adult, and older adult mothers from recent cohorts better or worse than those in earlier cohorts? Second, have within-cohort SES differences between groups of mothers changed across cohorts? This question focuses on comparisons between teen and other mothers, first by comparing teen mothers to non-teen mothers, then by comparing teen mothers to women who became mothers in their early twenties.Societal trendsRecent social, cultural, and economic trends in the U.S. include rising educational attainment, particularly among women, increasing proportions of women joining the work force, and declining proportions of children growing up with both parents which are less likely than single-mother families to be poor. …