Outcomes for teenage mothers in the first years after birth

Description and objectives of the research

This project aims to describe education and labour market outcomes for teenage mothers and compare these to outcomes of similarly-aged women who have no children or who had children at an older age. The latter is probably most relevant when investigating outcomes a few years after having a child. Specific questions of interest are:

  1. In Australia, what are the teenage parenthood rates at age 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19? How do education, labour market and partnering outcomes (school completion, highest qualification, employment rate, hours of work, individual and household income, having a partner/spouse) compare for women who are/were teenage mothers with similarly-aged women yet to have children or who first had children later in life?
  2. How do these outcomes vary by broad group (metropolitan/rural, English speaking, Indigenous, immigrant, parents are immigrants, low/high SES regions), and with the age women had their first child, and the time elapsed since they had their last child?

The above two questions will be answered using descriptive analysis, which will provide a brief overview of the current situation with regard to teenage mothers. We will use in-depth multivariate analysis to answer the following question:

  1. How have patterns regarding the incidence of teenage parenthood, socio-economic factors related to teenage parenthood, and education/labour market/partnering outcomes for teenage parents changed over recent decades?
  2. How do outcomes for teenage mothers develop over time since having their first child? And, in addition if it is possible to estimate this, to what extent are any differences in these outcomes likely to reflect a causal impact of teenage motherhood?

These questions aim to describe the outcomes for teenage mothers on a number of aspects, compare these to outcomes for other women and find potential explanations for the worse outcomes usually experienced by teenage mothers.

Contact: the Melbourne Institute contact for this project is Associate Professor Guyonne Kalb.

Progress

This project commenced in March 2012 with the final report submitted to the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations in December 2012.