Teenage fatherhood hampers educational development

A new study has revealed that teenage fatherhood leads to a decrease in years of schooling.

The study, from Economic Inquiry, examines the negative educational and economic outcomes of teenage fatherhood, a topic far less researched than teenage motherhood.

Authors utilized the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a school-based, nationally representative longitudinal study of 7th to 12th graders in the United States beginning in 1994-1995. Their dataset included 362 men younger than 18 years and nine months. The authors compared young men whose partners experienced a pregnancy but suffered a miscarriage, with those whose partners gave birth.

The authors found that while only 64% of the study participants received a high school diploma and 16 percent received a general Educational Development (GED), the experience of teenage fatherhood dramatically shifted these outcomes by reducing the chances of graduating high school by fifteen percentage points and increasing the chances of receiving a GED by eleven percentage points.

Co-authors Jason Fletcher and Barbara Wolfe stated, “Educational interventions may need to target new teenage fathers in order to increase their chances of completing their high school diplomas.”

“This may include the provision of sex education as well as access to contraceptives,” they added.