Socioeconomic and Marital Outcomes of Adolescent Marriage, Adolescent Childbirth, and Their Co-Occurrence

Abstract

Data on longterm educational occupational and marital outcomes in a sample of over 20000 30-55-year old white and black women drawn from the 1980 US Current Population Survey suggest that the co-occurence of adolescent marriage and adolescent childbirth is associated with different degrees of risk than the occurrence of either event alone. The best socioeconomic outcomes were experienced by women who never married or gave birth women who married in adulthood but never gave birth and women who married and gave birth in adulthood. By contrast the lowest levels of educational attainment and occupational status were experienced by women who had an adolescent childbirth regardless of whether or when marriage occurred. Adolescent marriage without coincident or subsequent childbirth and adolescent marriage followed by 1st childbirth in adulthood were associated with better socioeconomic outcomes than the combination of adolescent marriage and adolescent childbirth however. On average women who gave birth in adolescence completed less than 11 years of education compared with 11.82 years for the adolescent marriage/adult childbirth group and 12.09 years for the adolescent marriage/no children group. Marital instability was the associated with both adolescent marriage and adolescent childbirth although the former was the stronger predictor. Women who married and gave birth in adolescence were interestingly more likely to have an intact 1st marriage than women who married in adolescence but never had children. Overall these findings confirm the belief that adolescent childbearing places women at a longterm substantial disadvantage socioeconomically regardless of whether marriage takes place.