CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 319Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive HealthReproductive Health and ContraceptionFamily Dynamics and Relationships

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 22 of the 22 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Why is the Teen Birth Rate in the United States So High and Why Does It Matter?

Open access
Kearney, Melissa S, Levine, Phillip B·2012·Journal of Economic Perspectives
DOI 10.1257/jep.26.2.141
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Why is the rate of teen childbearing is so unusually high in the United States as a whole, and in some U.S. states in particular? U.S. teens are two and a half times as likely to give birth as compared to teens in Canada, around four times as likely as teens in Germany or Norway, and almost ten times as likely as teens in Switzerland. A teenage girl in Mississippi is four times more likely to give birth than a teenage girl in New Hampshire—and 15 times more likely to give birth as a teen compared to a teenage girl in Switzerland. We examine teen birth rates alongside pregnancy, abortion, and “shotgun” marriage rates as well as the antecedent behaviors of sexual activity and contraceptive use. We demonstrate that variation in income inequality across U.S. states and developed countries can explain a sizable share of the geographic variation in teen childbearing. Our reading of the totality of evidence leads us to conclude that being on a low economic trajectory in life leads many teenage girls to have children while they are young and unmarried. Teen childbearing is explained by the low economic trajectory but is not an additional cause of later difficulties in life. Surprisingly, teen birth itself does not appear to have much direct economic consequence. Our view is that teen childbearing is so high in the United States because of underlying social and economic problems. It reflects a decision among a set of girls to “drop-out” of the economic mainstream; they choose nonmarital motherhood at a young age instead of investing in their own economic progress because they feel they have little chance of advancement.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1257/jep.26.2.141

Cites

22 of 22 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Joseph V., 2005, Journal of Human Resources, 40, 683

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 319

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Kearney, M. S., & Levine, P. B.
Affiliations
National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Publisher
American Economic Association
Published
2012-05-01
Volume
26
Issue
2
Pages
141-166
ISSN
0895-3309 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1257/jep.26.2.141
OpenAlex
W3124477828
Cited by
319
References
22
Citations by year
2026: 12 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 26 · 2016: 27 · 2015: 34 · 2014: 33 · 2013: 21 · 2012: 6
FWCI
53.46
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • The Journal of Economic Perspectives (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Reproductive Health and Contraception
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
Keywords
teen childbearing, teen birth rates, income inequality, cross-national comparison, adolescent pregnancy, abortion, contraceptive use, teenage sexual activity, economic trajectories, social marginalization, state-level variation, low-income women, United States, Russia, Canada, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, economic opportunities
MeSH terms
Abortion, Induced, Adolescent, Adolescent Behavior, Adult, Birth Rate, Contraception, Contraception Behavior, Data Collection, Demography, Ethnicity, Female, Fertility, Forecasting, Health Services Accessibility, Humans, Income, Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice, Pregnancy, Pregnancy in Adolescence, Sexual Behavior, Sex Education, Sexual Abstinence, Social Alienation, Socioeconomic Factors, United States, Marital Status, Pregnancy Rate, Developed Countries, Racial Groups, Young Adult

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review