by Jim Rose in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of love and marriage, labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: teen pregnancies

Teenage pregnancy rates have been cut in half in the past 20 years. buff.ly/1PnIpdN http://t.co/1SIJeTeZjj—

HumanProgress.org (@humanprogress) August 14, 2015

The causes of teen pregnancies are well described in Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas’s Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage and Jason DeParle’s American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare. See Amy Wax’s superb book review Too few good men.

Women on a low social trajectory see no reason to wait before having a baby and they look down upon those women that wait.

People now regard marriage as a luxury good rather than as a necessity. They refuse to tie the knot unless they have first achieved economic success. A house, a well-paying job, and enough money for a nice wedding are now needed before considering a trip to the altar.

These young women put motherhood first and have no intention of marrying the layabouts that often father their children, most of all, because of repeated and open infidelity.

The women do not complain of men’s failure to earn enough, but rather of their unwillingness to grasp opportunities, work steadily, and spend wisely. The objection is not to modest earning power, but to financial profligacy, defiant attitudes, and lack of work discipline… The most vociferous complaints are reserved for men’s chronic criminal behaviour, drug use, violence, and, above all, repeated and flagrant sexual infidelity. Most men made no effort to hide their frequent liaisons, which were often carried on simultaneously. More often than not, those relationships produced babies

Having a baby changes these young women from extras on the stage of life to a mother and all the community respect and social standing that commands.

Babies need not await the achievement of an elevated position in life, because childbearing is a fundamental hallmark of female adulthood that is central to poor women’s dignity and identity. In the authors’ words, “women rely on their children to bring validation, purpose, companionship, and order to their often chaotic lives — things they find hard to come by in other ways.” In a perverse inversion of old values, these woman have come to regard lone motherhood as the ultimate heroic act, the proving ground of their responsible devotion to others.

These new mothers try and clean up their act. They stop drinking and taking drugs. For the first time in their lives they have a purpose, which is to raise a child.

Far too many social commentators see a teen pregnancy through their own lens as a middle class parent and the despair they would fell because their daughter will not go to university and all that brings including a better class of husband.

University educated couples are not called power couples for nothing – their earning power is this stunning compared to going it on your own. The emergence of power couples means that less educated women may prefer to stay single and raise children on their own rather than marry what is left in the marriage pool.