Estimating Long-Term Consequences of Teenage Childbearing - an Examination of the Siblings Approach

Swedish Institute for Social Research Working Paper No. 1/2004

34 Pages Posted: 5 Apr 2004

See all articles by Helena Holmlund

Helena Holmlund

IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: March 19, 2004

Abstract

One of the remedies to selection bias in estimates of the labour market consequences of teenage motherhood has been to estimate within-family effects. A major critique, however, is that heterogeneity within the family might still bias the estimates. Using a large Swedish data set on biological sisters, I revisit the question of the consequences of teenage motherhood. My contribution is that I am able to control for heterogeneity within the family; I use grade-point-averages at age 16, a pre-motherhood characteristic that differs across sisters within the same family. My findings confirm the presumption that within-family heterogeneity can result in biased within-family estimates. Moreover, my results show that when controlling for school performance, the siblings approach and a traditional cross section yield similar coefficients.

Keywords: Fertility, sibling models

JEL Classification: J13

Suggested Citation

Holmlund, Helena, Estimating Long-Term Consequences of Teenage Childbearing - an Examination of the Siblings Approach (March 19, 2004). Swedish Institute for Social Research Working Paper No. 1/2004, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=524103 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.524103

Helena Holmlund (Contact Author)

IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation ( email )

Box 513
751 20 Uppsala
Sweden

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
62
Abstract Views
1,648
Rank
632,837
PlumX Metrics