Working Paper 281 - Early Childbearing, School Attainment and Cognitive Skills

Herrera Catalina and David Sahn

Working Paper Series from African Development Bank

Abstract: Female secondary school attendance has recently increased in sub-Saharan Africa, and so has the risk of becoming pregnant while attending school. Using panel data that capture the transition from adolescence to adulthood in Madagascar, we analyze the impact of teenage pregnancy on young women’s human capital. Early childbearing increases the likelihood of dropping out of school by 42 percent and decreases the chances of completing secondary school by 44 percent. This pregnancy-related school dropout is associated with a reduction of 1.1 standard deviations in math and French test scores. Delaying the first birth by a year increases the probability of current enrollment by 5 percent and test scores by 0.2 standard deviations. We instrument early pregnancy with the young woman’s community-level access, and her exposure to condoms since age 15 after controlling for pre-fertility socioeconomic conditions. Our results are robust to different specifications that address potential endogeneity of program placement and instrument validity.

Date: 2017-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Docume ... gnitive_Skills__.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:adb:adbwps:2398

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from African Development Bank African Development Bank Group, Avenue Joseph Anoma, 01 BP 1387 Abidjan 01, Côte d'Ivoire. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Adeleke Oluwole Salami ().