Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Adolescent childbearing has important implications for the educational and labor market outcomes of young women. Fertility and demands of motherhood impose costs on a woman in terms of economic opportunities. While many studies have been conducted for developed countries, only little empirical evidence exists in the context of developing countries. Some studies demonstrate that childbearing is associated with a decrease in the labor supply of teen mothers. In contrast, some studies find that teen mothers are more likely to be employed than non-teen mothers.

In this study, we attempt to establish a causal relationship between the timing of first birth and labor market outcomes of a sample of young Filipino women using the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey 2009. We categorize the maternal status of young women aged 25-26 years into three: teen mothers, young mothers, and not mothers, based on the age at first birth. To account for the potential endogeneity of fertility timing, we employ an instrumental variable, specifically, a Control Function approach, which gives consistent estimates in a non-linear framework. We instrument for the timing of first birth using age at menarche of the young women and the community level availability of supplies of contraception such as distance to family planning centers and drugstores at adolescence.

We examine the effect of being a teen mother on labor force participation by employing a Logistic model. To understand how fertility timing affects the quality of jobs that women select into, we use a multinomial logit model where we classify employment status into three categories: formal employment, informal employment, and non-participation. Our results suggest that, on average, teenage childbearing decreases the probability of working relative to not mothers. Among those who work, teen mothers are less likely to be formally employed as compared to not mothers. Moreover, among mothers, increase in the age at first birth is associated with an increase in the probability of being formally employed and a decrease in the probability of having an informal employment. Some suggested mechanisms include lower human capital accumulation and trade-offs between demands for childcare and time allocation for formal jobs.

Another approach to gauging the differences in labor outcomes associated with different fertility timing is to analyze the employment transitions from adolescence to adulthood. Using the employment histories from age 17-18 years to 25-26 years of this cohort of Filipino women, we estimate the probabilities of transitions among four labor outcomes -formal employment, informal employment, non-participation, and school. Our estimates suggest that teenage mothers are more likely to move from school to informal jobs or non-participation as compared to young mothers and not-mothers. These findings have significant policy implications for the Philippines, where abortion is illegal, and access to contraception is limited. It is imperative to facilitate higher educational attainment by providing better access to contraception for delaying childbirth. Policies aimed at providing support for childcare also may enable young women to cater to the demands of a formal job and reduce the likelihood of lower quality informal jobs.