The effect of maternal employment on teenage childbearing

This paper estimates the effect of a mothers employment on her teenage daughters likelihood of birth. Using data from the United States, the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988, the author finds that teenagers with working mothers who attend relatively wealthy schools are more likely (77%) to have a birth compared to teens who attend similar schools but have non-working mothers. In contrast, teenagers with working mothers who attend relatively poor schools are less likely (18%) to have a birth compared to teens who attend similar schools but have non-working mothers.I am indebted to Marcia Carlson, Thomas DeLeire, Angela Fertig, Brian Jacob, Darren Lubotsky, Scott Lynch, Susan Mayer, Sara McLanahan, Robert Michael, German Rodriguez, seminar participants at Princeton University and The University of Chicago, and two anonymous referees for insightful suggestions made on earlier versions of this paper. I also gratefully acknowledge financial support from a Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research Graduate Fellowship, a Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation Graduate Fellowship, the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University, and the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, which is supported by center grant 5 P30 HD32030 from the NICHD. Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang.