is little or no contraceptive use. Although the differences in levels of completed fertility between early and later childbearing is declining, women who have their first child as teenagers still tend to have larger families, by about one child on average (see CBASSE (1987) for a review of the evidence).

**_In part because of their educational deficit and larger family size, adolescent mothers are less likely to find stable and remunerative employment than their peers who delay childbearing._** The primary impact of teenage childbearing on wages is likely to operate through the two sources of human capital formation, though perhaps in opposite ways. Education is likely to be curtailed by pregnancy, especially if it occurs in high school. However, girls who have to support their child may enter the job market sooner and reach a higher level of experience before their counterparts. Four studies carried out in the Barbados, Chile, Guatemala and Mexico in the 1990s show that poor adolescent mothers seem to work more and earn less than other mothers (Buvinic (1998)). The most careful attempts to isolate a causal effect have found at most modest positive effects of delaying childbirth and in some cases find negative effects. Geronimus and Korenman (1992) compare outcomes for sisters and find little difference in outcomes between the sister who gave birth as a teenager and the sister who did not. Ribar (1992) uses age at menarche as an exogenous source of variation in age at first birth and finds no causal link between teenage childbearing and high school completion. Grogger and Bronars (1993) compare teenagers who gave birth to twins to those who gave birth to a single child and conclude to a negative impact of the extra child. Hotz et al. (2004), Ashcraft and Lang (2006) use miscarriage as an instrument for birth among girls who become pregnant as teens. They find that delaying childbearing reduces the probability that girls complete high school and adversely affects a number of other adult outcomes.

**_Early childbearing is associated with changes in family size (larger families) and family arrangements (fewer traditional nuclear families), and with the transmission of childbearing preferences across generations (Buvinic (1998))._** Evidence from Latin American countries supports the idea that early childbearing is associated with higher total fertility and perpetuation of large families, curbing the process of demographic transition in rural areas. Becoming a parent as a teenager not only leads to lower social and economic attainment for the mother and her child, but it also has some repercussions on the society.

# 2.2. Links between Education and Fertility

Education and early fertility are known to be negatively correlated. On the one hand, early fertility often leads to termination of schooling because of time incompatibility, others’ look of disapproval, law discriminating pregnant students. On the other hand, education can affect women’s early fertility decisions through access to knowledge, information and new ideas. It enhances overall efficiency, market opportunities and social status. It also changes attitudes and behavior, bringing about openness to new ideas and experiences, an increasing independence from traditional authority, and a questioning of passivity.

**_A number of studies concur that many young women drop out of school as a result of pregnancy_** (see Gyepi-Garbrah (1985) for evidence on Sub-Saharan Africa). In Kenya, a study conducted in 1985 estimated that about 10 percent of female students dropped out of secondary school because they were pregnant (Division of Family Health/GTZ Support Unit (1988)). Some countries have relatively accommodating policies concerning the readmission of young women who have been pregnant or given birth. In Kenya, schoolgirls who become pregnant are required to discontinue their studies for at least a year (Ferguson et al. (1988)). Policies in many countries are much stricter: they decree that pregnant schoolgirls be expelled permanently (available

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