FIGURE 1
SOURCE: Figure adapted from National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Statistics of the United States, 1968, Vol 1: Natality.
Washington, DC: Public Health Service, 1970; National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Statistics of the United States, 1992, Vol 1:
Natality. Washington, DC: Public Health Service, 1995; Ventura, Stephanie J., Joyce A. Martin, Sally C. Curtin, T. J. Mathews, and
M. M. Park. ‘‘Births: Final Data for 1998.’’ National Vital Statistics Reports 48 (3). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health
Statistics, 2000; Sally C. Curtin, and Joyce A. Martin. ‘‘Births: Preliminary Data for 1999.’’ National Vital Statistics Reports 48 (14).
Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 2000.
sentative surveys, they found that the long-term
‘‘costs’’ of teen childbearing were lower than previ-
ously thought. Results based on one of the surveys in-
dicated that future incomes and employment status
were not significantly different among teen and older
mothers. Similar analyses done by Geronimus and
others (and replicated by Saul Hoffman and asso-
ciates using data from another survey) did show some-
what lower incomes and poorer economic status
among teen mothers when compared to their sisters
who were not teen mothers. Although findings varied
in different surveys, all of these studies consistently
demonstrated that previous research, which did not
account for background disadvantage, tended to
overstate the negative consequences of teen child-
bearing.
More recently, Joseph Hotz and colleagues com-
pared mothers who gave birth as teenagers, with
women who became pregnant at the same age but suf-
fered miscarriages and subsequently delayed child-
bearing for at least three or four years. Their results
indicated that, on average, those who gave birth actu-
ally had significantly higher incomes later on than
women who had delayed childbearing. In this study
there was no difference among the groups of mothers
in the likelihood of obtaining a high-school level edu-
cation, although teen mothers were more likely to ob-
tain a GED than a high school diploma. Teen
mothers also tended to have more births by age thirty
than the other mothers, and had spent a greater pro-
portion of this time interval unmarried.
Studies have also examined the consequences of
teen motherhood for children. For example, KristinTEENAGE PREGNANCY 403