Growth curve analyses of the relationship between early maternal age and children’s mathematics and reading performance

Regarding the methods used to examine the early maternal age-child academic outcomes relationship, the extant literature has tended to examine change using statistical analyses that fail to appreciate that individuals vary in their rates of growth. Of the one study I have been able to find that employs a true growth model to estimate this relationship, the authors only controlled for characteristics of the maternal household after family formation; confounding background factors of mothers that might select them into early childbearing, a possible source of bias, were ignored. The authors’ findings nonetheless suggested an inverse relationship between early maternal age, i.e., a first birth between the ages of 13 and 17, and Canadian adolescents’ mean math performance at age 10. Early maternal age was not related to the linear slope of age. To elucidate whether the early maternal age-child academic outcomes association, treated in a growth context, is consistent with this finding, the present study built on it using US data and explored children’s mathematics and reading trajectories from age 5 on. Its unique contribution is that it further explicitly controlled for maternal background factors and employed a three-level growth model with repeated measures of children nested within their mothers. Though the strength of the relationship varied between mean initial academic performance and mean academic growth, results confirmed that early maternal age was negatively related to children’s mathematics and reading achievement, net of post-teen first birth child-specific and maternal household factors. Once maternal background factors were included, there was no statistically significant relationship between early maternal age and either children’s mean initial mathematics and reading scores or their mean mathematics and reading growth.     

Learning to do well or learning to do good? Estimating the effects of schooling on civic engagement, social cohesion, and labor market outcomes in the presence of endowments

Although some point to the large effects of schooling on civic engagement (usually measured in terms of volunteering and participation in civic organizations) and social cohesion (usually measured in terms of social networks and relationship quality), the effects of schooling on social outcomes have not been estimated with the same rigor as the effects of schooling on labor-market outcomes, such as earnings. In particular, previous research has failed to consider (i) the many potential and often unobserved confounding factors (“endowments”) influencing both schooling and social outcomes, including family upbringing, innate characteristics, and personality, and (ii) the ways in which schooling pushes individuals in multiple directions simultaneously, including toward greater social engagement, but also toward more independent and market-driven pursuits. Using samples of unrelated persons, ordinary siblings, and identical twins, this study explores the effects of schooling on measures of civic engagement and social relationships, as well as labor-force earnings and labor-force participation. The siblings models reveal a more complex picture than typically suggested by standard individual estimates. On one hand, the results reveal a robust positive effect of schooling on earnings: well-schooled persons work more and earn more, albeit not as much as associations without control for endowments suggest. On the other hand, the results reveal more tenuous and occasionally negative effects of schooling on social outcomes. The effects of schooling on volunteering and membership in civic organizations, for example, disappear almost entirely with control for endowments. Also, within-identical-twins models reverse the positive effects of schooling on reports of support from friends, family, and coworkers. These results may reflect the tension schooling creates between market and non-market commitments, as well as between independence and interpersonal reliability. Schooling may, indeed, induce some pro-social behaviors, but schooling allows individuals choices of whether to pursue more personal interests as well.