Estimating the effect of adolescent fertility on educational attainment in Cape Town using a propensity score weighted regression

dc.creatorRanchhod, Vimal
dc.creatorLam, David
dc.creatorLeibbrandt, Murray
dc.creatorMarteleto, Letitia
dc.date2012-12-03T12:07:09Z
dc.date2012-12-03T12:07:09Z
dc.date2011-03
dc.date.accessioned2015-05-28T10:05:06Z
dc.date.available2015-05-28T10:05:06Z
dc.date.issued2015-05-28
dc.descriptionWe estimate the effect of a teenage birth on the educational attainment of young mothers in Cape Town, South Africa. Longitudinal and retrospective data on youth from the CAPS dataset are used. We control for a number of early life and pre-fertility characteristics. We also reweight our data using a propensity score matching process to generate a more appropriate counterfactual group. Accounting for respondent characteristics reduces estimates of the effect of a teen birth on dropping out of school, successfully completing secondary school, and years of schooling attained. Our best estimates of the effect of a teen birth on high school graduation by ages 20 and 22 are -5.9 and -2.7 percentage points respectively. The former is significant at the 5% level,while the latter is not statistically significant. Thus, there appears to be some 'catching up' in educational attainment by teen mothers. We find only limited support for the hypothesis that there is heterogeneity in the effect of a teen birth, depending on the actual age of the first birth. By age 22, none of the estimates for high school graduation or years of schooling are statistically significant, regardless of the specific age at which the teen birth occurred. Despite this, we do find evidence that a teen birth does correlate with reduced educational expectations. The proportion of teen mothers who report an expected final educational attainment of high school graduation or greater is about 15 percentage points lower than the matched set of non-teen mothers, but this is not manifest amongst the girls whom we know will subsequently become teen mothers at some point after these expectations are measured.
dc.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/11090/58
dc.identifier.ris TY - Report DA - 2015-05-28 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town KW - Propensity score matching KW - Teenage birth KW - Educational attainment KW - Longitudinal data KW - CAPS LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2015 T1 - Estimating the effect of adolescent fertility on educational attainment in Cape Town using a propensity score weighted regression TI - Estimating the effect of adolescent fertility on educational attainment in Cape Town using a propensity score weighted regression UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11090/58 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11090/58
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherSouthern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit
dc.publisher.departmentSALDRUen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Commerceen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.subjectPropensity score matching
dc.subjectTeenage birth
dc.subjectEducational attainment
dc.subjectLongitudinal data
dc.subjectCAPS
dc.titleEstimating the effect of adolescent fertility on educational attainment in Cape Town using a propensity score weighted regression
dc.typeReport
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceSALDRU Reporten_ZA
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