Original articleLong-Term Consequences of Adolescent Parenthood Among African-American Urban Youth: A Propensity Score Matching Approach
Section snippets
Present study and hypotheses
The aim of this study is to identify long-term socioeconomic consequences of teenage parenthood for women and for men. Although most studies have focused on short-term outcomes (e.g., into the early 20s) [4], [6], [7], this study examines socioeconomic outcomes at two points further into adulthood (ages 32 and 42 years) to identify the persistence of effects. Analyses of long-term consequences among teenage fathers are rare [20], [22], [23], and this work allows for an identification of effects
Sample
This analysis is based on the Woodlawn Study, a longitudinal study of African-American cohort from a socially disadvantaged community in Chicago. All first graders in the nine public and three parochial schools in the Woodlawn community were invited to participate and only 13 families declined [25]. In this study, data were collected at four time points. In first grade (1966–1967; age, 6 years), teachers and mothers (or mother surrogates) were interviewed (N = 1,242). When these children were
Results
Women were statistically significantly more likely than men to have a child as a teenager with 37.3% of women and 19.3% of men becoming teen parents (see Table 1). Also shown in Table 1, participants were relatively disadvantaged in adulthood, particularly as young adults. Overall, women were more educated than men at both young adulthood and midlife but had higher rates of welfare receipt in young adulthood.
As shown in Table 2, compared to nonteenage mothers, teenage mothers were more likely
Discussion
This study identified the socioeconomic consequences in the 30s and 40s of teenage parenthood among a cohort of urban African-American men and women from disadvantaged backgrounds. We hypothesized that teenage parenting perpetuates early disadvantage so that teen parents lag behind in adult educational and economic outcomes when compared to peers with similar background characteristics. A key finding is the difference in the breadth of socioeconomic consequences of teenage parenting we observed
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse grant R01DA026863 (to K.M.G., Principal Investigator). The authors thank Catherine Maybury for careful review and contributions to the article. We are very grateful to the Woodlawn cohort participants, the Woodlawn Study Advisory Board, the Woodlawn Study Team, Margaret Ensminger, and Sheppard Kellam for their participation and guidance over many years.
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Conflicts of Interest: This research was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant R01DA026863 (to K.M.G., Principal Investigator).