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Does Anyone Suffer From Teenage Motherhood? Mental Health Effects of Teen Motherhood in Great Britain Are Small and Homogeneous

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dc.contributor.authorO’Flaherty, M.
dc.contributor.authorKalucza, S.
dc.contributor.authorBon, J.
dc.date.issued2023
dc.description.abstractTeen mothers experience disadvantage across a wide range of outcomes. However, previous research is equivocal with respect to possible long-term mental health consequences of teen motherhood and has not adequately considered the possibility that effects on mental health may be heterogeneous. Drawing on data from the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study, this article applies a novel statistical machine-learning approach-Bayesian Additive Regression Trees-to estimate the effects of teen motherhood on mental health outcomes at ages 30, 34, and 42. We extend previous work by estimating not only sample-average effects but also individual-specific estimates. Our results show that sample-average mental health effects of teen motherhood are substantively small at all time points, apart from age 30 comparisons to women who first became mothers at age 25‒30. Moreover, we find that these effects are largely homogeneous for all women in the sample-indicating that there are no subgroups in the data who experience important detrimental mental health consequences. We conclude that there are likely no mental health benefits to policy and interventions that aim to prevent teen motherhood.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityMartin O’Flaherty, Sara Kalucza, and Joshua Bon
dc.identifier.citationDemography, 2023; 60(3):707-729
dc.identifier.doi10.1215/00703370-10788364
dc.identifier.issn0070-3370
dc.identifier.issn1533-7790
dc.identifier.orcidBon, J. [0000-0003-2313-2949]
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2440/148140
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherDuke University Press
dc.relation.granthttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/CE140100027
dc.relation.granthttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/CE20010025
dc.rights© 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
dc.source.urihttps://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-10788364
dc.subjectTeenage parenthood; Mental health; Causal inference; Bayesian methods; Statistical machine learning
dc.subject.meshAdolescent
dc.subject.meshAdult
dc.subject.meshBayes Theorem
dc.subject.meshCohort Studies
dc.subject.meshFemale
dc.subject.meshHumans
dc.subject.meshMental Health
dc.subject.meshMothers
dc.subject.meshPregnancy
dc.subject.meshPregnancy in Adolescence
dc.subject.meshUnited Kingdom
dc.titleDoes Anyone Suffer From Teenage Motherhood? Mental Health Effects of Teen Motherhood in Great Britain Are Small and Homogeneous
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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