A tale of two sisters: Investigating the socio-economic outcomes of teen childbearing in South Africa

This mixed methods study attempts to understand the effect of teenage
childbearing in determining future socio-economic consequences for teenage
mothers. This is accomplished by assessing the effect of a teen birth on out-
comes such as educational attainment, employment, welfare and poverty in
South Africa by applying a sibling-fixed effects technique. Using the National
Income Dynamics Study dataset (2012), the paper compares siblings to control
for family background heterogeneity and finds that teenage childbearing has a
strong negative relationship with the completion of matric and a positive
relationship with employment and welfare. This relationship is underestimated
by traditional cross-sectional estimates which points to the importance of
controlling for unobserved family heterogeneity. To complement these
findings, the study also highlights the role of the family and the school in
providing support structures to smoothen the immediate adverse effects of
teenage childbearing. These findings indicate that interventions are needed
which directly delay childbearing as well as create supportive environments at
the family and school level.