If we do assume that this section accurately reflects the literature, then it does seem that a large proportion of the poor economic outcome is due to factors other than teen birth.

I would like to see a slightly different breakdown than “teen” – since birth at 19 may give a very different outcome than birth at 17 or 15. An OECD report from 1998 shows that the USA and the UK have not only relatively high rates of teen births, but also relatively high rates of 15-17 year old births as well. In fact, the USA 15-17 birth rate was higher than rates for 15-19 in all coutries other than UK. ( http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/repcard3e.pdf )

I’ve done enough modeling to know that you should be careful not to discount those small-effect variables. Their effects may be much larger, but it just so happens that another variable in the model is a better proxy for it and drowns it out — making it look less important. Income inequality, for example, could be a better proxy for state transfers.

Nobody.Really as usual presented a very interesting vantage. But, as I reread his comment, one word in particular resonated with me: prospect-less.

What does “prospect-less” mean functionally? To remain within proper context, we’re speaking of the prospects (specifically, the lack thereof) available to teenage women between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. Granted, the viable options increase considerably the higher you go within age spectrum, but then again, you could also use that same logic to circumvent the syllogism propelling the notion that having a child now is more advantageous to a teenage mother.

Typically, prospects for a young woman would consist of a career, school, a combination of both, and perhaps finding a husband. The aforementioned caveats I have stated withstanding, at any point is the option to have a child at such an unprepared age in American society truly logical?

I don’t know. . . .

Completing a degree at a university typically requires four years of full-time study, but that needn’t be the only avenue. There are community colleges, and vocational schools that offer shorter (less expensive opportunities), and flexible schedules to accommodate a multitude of demographics seeking to attain training or retraining. On the other hand. . . a child could cost as much (if not more) than tuition to an institute of higher learning, and also doesn’t equip you with the intangible set of skills or the tangible piece of paper that qualifies you for a number of other opportunities which could potentially recompense you for your investment in the long-term. Not to mention it takes eighteen years to raise a child.

Does becoming a mother award you with intangible skills, or learned abilities? I suppose so, but I don’t believe there are many extant (nor lucrative) jobs that demand a requisite knowledge of teenage motherhood, and beyond that, I don’t know of any clause within affirmative action that confers preference to mothers or fathers over single men and women.

Gaining employment offers similar training, and experience with the added benefit of not having to pay tuition. Not only that, but if you are preparing to become a mother, aren’t you icing your cake by having an existing income, and supplementing it with the societal amenities mentioned by Nobody.Really? Moreover, couldn’t this be compounded further by the acquisition of a husband, making this trek possibly the most appealing?

All-in-all, I don’t understand the choice of teenage motherhood to be the most logical decision, which by default compels me to postulate that perhaps it is some sort of noumena that compels these young women to believe accruing another burden is tantamount to being successful?

I’m unsure. My thinking-cap may be broken.

But, according to a blog entry by Paul Krugman sometime ago, American teenage pregnancy rates are actually declining, which would stand as evidence to substantiate the claim that either society is learning, or teenage motherhood is in some other way less desirable than in the past.

Link: http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/sites/default/files/14_fig02.jpg

1) As with health care stats, it seems cross-sectional analysis is complicated by the heterogeneity of the US population. Here the authors acknowledge it’s largely a southern (and particularly Hispanic) ‘problem’, yet I see no good comps for that.

2) “We conclude that women with low socioeconomic status have more teen, nonmarital births when they live in higher-inequality locations, all else equal”.

So this seems to be another application of the idea that relative wealth disparities *per se* are a problem; in this case, people feel less “marginalized and hopeless” when everyone else is equally poor, than where there may be examples of the possibility of improving one’s station in life? The authors acknowledge their thesis doesn’t explain the declining trend in recent decades, but even if true, do we best design policy to counter or entrench such psychology? Seems like a dangerously self-fulfilling presumptive leap from “most” to “all”; at a minimum, childbirth would seem to *ensure* the women in question remain on the same low trajectory. Of course the authors don’t actually offer policy alternatives to create more motivating “perceptions of opportunity” to overcome ‘cultural’ barriers / norms. They indicate that if anything *decreasing* transfer payments reduces births at the margin, and as a minor measure suggest more college aid, but is anyone who is *prepared* for college really currently precluded from going? (Well maybe if they have kids…) Beyond that they merely say it’s hard to know what to do and whatever we do may involve large costs. Thus in the end the ‘self-selection’ thesis comes across as “they’re simply screwed”. And the idea that there are no LT economic consequences of childbirth seems at odds with the ‘disillusionment’ thesis, since being disillusioned implies that you gave up something of potential value.

As originally used, it was essentially neutral, or as neutral as any term used by Europeans to describe people they viewed as culture-less and of the land. Anthropologists continued to use it for decades as a neutral term, and that may still be the case.

In southern Africa, opinions vary, so far as I know, on whether it is now derogatory or not. The people who were *the Bushmen* have rejected the term in favor of calling themselves the San. Not all of them find it to be a pejorative term, which I understand to be similar to some American Indian groups that now accept externally imposed derogatory names because that is what they are commonly
known as (Navajo, for example).

The term IS, however, rejected across the board by African people when it is use to refer to *all* south Africans as if they were all, regardless of nation or culture group, landless heathens running across the bush in loincloths. Although nobody.really was talking about the nonexistent Australian bushmen, I was placing it in this category as a derogatory term because of the presumptions and stereotyping in his entire statement.