ABSTRACT
Teen childbearing has been shown to reduce the mother's educational attainment, her employment, her earnings, and her likelihood of marriage. Single parents with lower human capital and lower income may transmit to their children the kinds of economic and social disadvantage that give rise to adolescent crime. Multivariate statistical techniques provide a means to control for many observable factors that may confound the relationship between maternal age and filial incarceration. The age of the mother is but one of the differences in the circumstances facing the children of young teen mothers as compared to the children of older mothers. The proportion of births to young teen mothers has varied within a fairly narrow band over time. In 1950, the share of all births that women under 18 years old accounted for was 3.7 percent; this rose to 7.6 percent in 1975 and fell again to 4.6 percent in 1989.
