Duke University Press

We examine the long-term outcomes for a population of teenage mothers who give birth to their children around the end of high school. We compare the mothers whose high school education was interrupted by childbirth (because the child was born before her expected graduation date) with mothers who did not experience the same disruption to their education. We find that mothers who gave birth during the school year are 5.4 percentage points less likely to complete their high school education, are less likely to be married, and have more children than their counterparts who gave birth just a few months later. The wages for these two sets of teenage mothers are not statistically different, but with a lower likelihood of marriage and more children, the households of the treated mothers are more likely to fall below the poverty threshold. Although differences in educational attainment have narrowed over time, the differences in labor market outcomes and family structure have remained stable.

This article shows that the seasonality of food consumption during childhood, conditional on average consumption, affects long-run human capital development. We develop a model that distinguishes differences in average consumption levels, seasonal fluctuations, and idiosyncratic shocks, and estimate the model using panel data from early 1990s Tanzania. We then test whether the mean and seasonality of a child’s consumption profile affect height and educational attainment in 2010. Results show that the negative effects of greater seasonality are 30 % to 60 % of the magnitudes of the positive effects of greater average consumption. Put differently, children expected to have identical human capital based on annualized consumption measures will have substantially different outcomes if one child’s consumption is more seasonal. We discuss implications for measurement and policy.

Este documento estudia las tendencias del crecimiento de la población de los Estados Unidos en áreas metropolitanas en las seis décadas de 1900 a 1960. En 1900, solamente una tercera parte de la población de los Estados Unidos vivía en áreas metropolitanas. En 1960, esta porporción se había doblado, llegando a dos terceras partes, el sector metropolitano de la nación ha tendido a absorber una proporciń progresivamente mayor del crecimiento de la población, La creación de nuevas áreas metropoliatnas ha declinado como factor de influencia en el crecimiento de la población metropolitana. En décadas recientes ha tenido much mayor importancia la incorporación de condados continuos a áreas metropolitanas pre-existentes, condados que han sido incorporados dentro de la órbita de una creciente influencia metropolitana. Como las diferencias defecundidad han disminuído grandemente de importancia, las características del crecimiento metropolitano pueden explicarse casi totalmente a base de diferencias en las tasas de migracion neta. El aumento de la población metropolitana se ha concentrado en gran medida en la vecindad de las pocas áreas metropolitanas de mayor magnitud.

This study examines whether children with a younger sibling whose birth was unintended experience larger declines in the quality of their home environment and larger increases in behavioral problems than children whose younger sibling’s birth was intended. We use data from the NLSY79 to estimate cross-lag regression models that assess changes in the home environment and children’s behavioral problems after the birth of a sibling (intended or unintended). Results are consistent with our hypotheses, finding that, indeed, unintended births have negative spillover effects. Compared with children whose sibling’s birth was intended, both boys and girls whose sibling’s birth was unintended experienced larger declines in the quality of their home environment, and boys had larger increases in behavioral problems. We also find some unexpected evidence that mistimed births may have larger negative effects than unwanted births. This deserves further research, and we offer some possible explanations that could guide those investigations.

A long-standing and unresolved issue in the study of racial and ethnic groups concerns the persistence of initial inequalities among groups. Recently it has surfaced again in the study of U.S. immigrant groups, in George Borjas’s (1994) claim that the human capital differences among early-twentieth-century immigrant groups are reflected in the relative socioeconomic achievements of their third generations. Reexamining this claim, we find that Borjas’s analysis hinges on a series of problematic decisions, such as his inclusion of non-European groups as well as his failure to take ethnically mixed ancestry into account and to compensate for the weak correspondence in eastern Europe between ethnic ancestry and the national frontiers of the early 1900s. We replicate a portion of his analysis, correcting for these problems. Our results reveal no correspondence between the literacy of the first generation and the educational attainment of the third among European groups. Borjas’s analysis seems to go farthest astray in including non-Europeans, especially Mexicans, because of the more systematic legal and social liabilities suffered by these groups.

Even though a single summary index of mortality can never replace the set of age-specific death rates, it has been found to be extremely useful for a wide variety of purposes. Such indexes are generally one of two types: aggregative indexes, such as directly standardized rates which reflect absolute differences between corresponding age-specific mortality rates; and average of relatives indexes which reflect proportional differences between those rates. The choice of index depends upon the purposes for which it is to be used, and is important as different indexes can produce very different results. While directly standardized rates are widely used, they depend upon the selection of an appropriate standard population and give disproportionately heavy weight to the high ages. Average of relatives indexes give equal weight to all ages, but are infrequently used as no index of that type has gained wide acceptability. This paper recommends the use of the geometric mean of the age-specific mortality rates as such an index, and shows that this index is readily calculable, unbiased, needs no standard population, is directly comparable to all other indexes so calculated, and accurately reflects exponential mortality patterns.

Abstract Data from the 1986–1988 Survey of Income and Program Participation panels were used to analyze how informal-caregiving of disabled elderly parents affected female labor supply. Instrumental variables analyses suggested that coresidence with a disabled parent leads to a large, significant reduction in work hours, due primarily to withdrawal from the labor force. Although the impact of nonhousehold member caregiving was insignificant, evidence of an effect was stronger when commitment of caregiving time was greater. Projections of female labor force participation rates should account for potential increases in caregiving demand due to the aging of the U.S. population.