The consequences of age at first childbirth: labor force participation and earnings.

Abstract

It is expected that an early 1st birth will affect a womans ability to work and to provide adequate income but its effect may be indirect rather than direct through factors more directly affecting the occupational and income attainment process -- years of education and the number of children for example. Those variables generally found to be important to the labor force participation of women and to the occupations and incomes of women who are working are reviewed followed by discussion of the hypotheses as to the indirect paths through which an early 1st birth affects later well-being. It is hypothesized that early childbearing is associated with less work experience and with lower occupational prestige hourly wages and annual income and that the negative association between early childbearing and labor force participation and earnings is indirect and mediated through the fewer years of school completed and larger family sizes of early childbearers. Analyses were conducted on 2 United States national samples of longitudinal data sets the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Both surveys were initially fielded in 1968 and in each case respondents were interviewed annually. Analyses reported here include interviews through the year 1972 for the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women and up through 1976 for the 2nd survey. Study results indicate that a woman who has a 1st birth while young but who 1) does not marry 2) complete her education and 3) does not go on to have a large family differs little from her later bearing peers in labor force participation work experience occupational status hourly wages or annual earnings later in life. Such women must necessarily be unique for it has been documented in other work that a close association exists between an early 1st birth and high subsequent fertility between early childbearing and school dropout and between early childbearing and marriage. It does appear that an early birth does have detrimental effects on womens later labor force status but only indirectly as a consequence of the births impact on fertility education and labor force experience.