Community-Wide Job Loss and Teenage Fertility / Elizabeth Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines, Christina M. Gibson-Davis.

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Ananat, Elizabeth

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TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w19003.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2013.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: We estimate the effects of economic downturns on the birth rates of 15- to 19-year-olds, using county-level business closings and layoffs in North Carolina over 1990-2010 as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the strength of the local economy. We find little effect of job losses on the white teen birth rate. For black teens, however, job losses to 1% of the working-age population decrease the birth rate by around 2%. Birth declines start five months after the job loss and then last for over a year. Linking the timing of job losses and conceptions suggests that black teen births decline due to increased terminations and perhaps also changes in pre-pregnancy behaviors; national data on risk behaviors also provide evidence that black teens reduce sexual activity and increase contraception use in response to job losses. Job losses seven to nine months after conception do not affect teen birth rates, indicating that teens do not anticipate job losses and lending confidence that job losses are "shocks" that can be viewed as quasi-experimental variation. We also find evidence that relatively advantaged black teens disproportionately abort after job losses, implying that the average child born to a black teen in the wake of job loss is relatively more disadvantaged.

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Previous	nber w19000 The Role of Automatic Stabilizers in the U.S. Business Cycle /	nber w19001 More is Less: Why Parties May Deliberately Write Incomplete Contracts /	nber w19002 Education, Cognition and Health: Evidence from a Social Experiment /	nber w19003 Community-Wide Job Loss and Teenage Fertility /	nber w19004 State-run Banks, Money Growth, and the Real Economy /	nber w19005 Economic Analysis of Risk and Uncertainty induced by Health Shocks: A Review and Extension /	nber w19006 China and India: Reforms and the Response /	Next

April 2013.

We estimate the effects of economic downturns on the birth rates of 15- to 19-year-olds, using county-level business closings and layoffs in North Carolina over 1990-2010 as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the strength of the local economy. We find little effect of job losses on the white teen birth rate. For black teens, however, job losses to 1% of the working-age population decrease the birth rate by around 2%. Birth declines start five months after the job loss and then last for over a year. Linking the timing of job losses and conceptions suggests that black teen births decline due to increased terminations and perhaps also changes in pre-pregnancy behaviors; national data on risk behaviors also provide evidence that black teens reduce sexual activity and increase contraception use in response to job losses. Job losses seven to nine months after conception do not affect teen birth rates, indicating that teens do not anticipate job losses and lending confidence that job losses are "shocks" that can be viewed as quasi-experimental variation. We also find evidence that relatively advantaged black teens disproportionately abort after job losses, implying that the average child born to a black teen in the wake of job loss is relatively more disadvantaged.