The Consequences of Teenage Childbearing before Roe v. Wade

That’s the title of a recent labor economics study authored by my breakfast companion this morning, Prof. Russell Weinstein. With Roe v. Wade now on the chopping block, his study has great significance. Here’s the study’s summary:

Using five cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth, we estimate the effect of teen motherhood on education, labor market, and marriage outcomes for teens conceiving from 1940 through 1968. Effects vary by marital status at conception, socioeconomic background, and year. Effects on teens married at conception were limited. However, teen mothers conceiving premaritally obtained less education and had a weaker marriage market. Teen mothers of the 1940s–1950s, affected by subsequent economic and social changes, were disadvantaged in the labor market of the 1970s. In the 1960s, teens for whom motherhood would be costly increasingly avoided pregnancy.

Postscript: We discussed how the new federal government will have less money for research grants to study topics such as his—and more significantly, global warming (and others).