You Do The Math

Please bookmark this paper: http://www.econ.ucla.edu/hotz/working_papers/teen.pdf

I am not going to comment on this. I simply want to going to bring this paper to your attention. Everything you read is a direct quote from the paper.


Teenage Childbearing and Its Life Cycle Consequences:Exploiting a Natural Experiment*

Abstract

"We exploit a “natural experiment” associated with human reproduction to identify the causal effect of teen childbearing on the socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers. We exploit the fact that some women who become pregnant experience a miscarriage and do not have a live birth. Using miscarriages an instrumental variable, we estimate the effect of teen mothers not delaying their childbearing on their subsequent attainment. We find that many of the negative consequences of teenage childbearing are much smaller than those found in previous studies. For most outcomes, the adverse consequences of early childbearing are short-lived. Finally, for annual hours of work and earnings, we find that a teen mother would have lower levels of each at older ages if they had delayed their childbearing."


V. Joseph Hotz
Department of Economics
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Susan Williams McElroy
School of Social Sciences
University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, TX 75083

Seth G. Sanders
Department of Economics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742




"Our major finding is that many of the apparent negative consequences of teenage child bearing on the subsequent socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers are much smaller than those found in studies that use alternative methodologies to identify the causal effects of teenage childbearing. We also find evidence that teenage mothers earn more in the labor market at older ages than they would have earned if they had delayed their births. Comparing our IV estimates with estimates based on ordinary least squares (OLS) regression methods that control for observable characteristics, we find that the apparent negative consequences previously attributed to teenage childbearing appear to be the result of the failure to account for other, unobservable factors. "(pg.5)

V. Conclusion "In this study, we have used an alternative and innovative strategy to estimate the causal effects associated with teenage childbearing in the U.S. In particular, we have focused on women who first become pregnant as teenagers and employ a natural experiment to obtain a more comparable,and plausible, comparison group with which to derive estimates of counterfactual outcomes for teen mothers. Our results suggest that much of the “concern” that has been registered regarding teenage childbearing is misplaced, at least based on its consequences for the subsequent educational and economic attainment of teen mothers. In particular, our estimates imply that the “poor” outcomes attained by such women cannot be attributed, in a causal sense, primarily to their decision to begin their childbearing at an early age. Rather, it appears that these outcomes are more the result of social and economic circumstances than they are the result of the early childbearing of these women.Furthermore, our estimates suggest that simply delaying their childbearing would not greatly enhance their educational attainment or subsequent earnings or affect their family structure. " (pg.28)


"Taken together, the results presented in this article call into question the view that teenage childbearing is one of the nation’s most serious social problems, at least when one measures its severity in terms of the potential financial gains to these women and to taxpayers of having allteen mothers delay their childbearing until they are older. At the same time, we caution the reader not to generalize from these findings. We have considered only selected potential consequences of teenage childbearing. Furthermore, the findings from one study cannot be considered as conclusive. However, for many of the socioeconomic outcomes considered in this article, our findings are consistent with the estimated effects of teenage childbearing found in the work of Geronimus and Korenman (1992) and Grogger and Bronars (1993). Our work, along with these earlier studies, raises serious doubts about the extent and nature of teenage childbearing as a “social problem” in the U.S. More importantly, our research casts doubt on the view that postponing childbearing will improve the socioeconomic attainment of teen mothers in any substantial way. " (pg. 29)

Nobody Is Forgotten

NOBODY with any interest in adoption should fail to visit Bastardette's Memoriam for Russian adoptees killed by their "forever families" Nikto Ne Zabyt - Nichto Ne Zabyto - Nobody is Forgotten - Nothing is Forgotten.

Bastardette writes:

On August 3, 2005, The Daily Bastardette published "Forever Family - Forever Dead: A Memoriam to Russian Adoptees Murdered by their Forever Families." Since then, that entry and my other pieces on abused and murdered Russian adoptees in the United States, I have received hundreds if not thousands of hits from the US Government, courts, child welfare agencies, the media, Russia and other countries of the Former Soviet Union, and the general public. To make it easier for these pieces to be found and read together in one place, I have collected all the entries here: Nikto Ne Zabyt - Nichto Ne Zabyto - Nobody is Forgotten - Nothing is Forgotten.

My entries on Masha Allen adopted by a divorced male pedophile, staved and sexually abused for years before her rescue by the FBI, are also here. Though freed from her Forever Father, she remains victim of the adoption industry and a blind and silent child welfare system that wants her to go away You see, Masha has talked too much She lifted up the rock. She is the Rosetta Stone of corrupt international adoption. Masha, too, must be remembered for the brave and beautiful girl she is--and to be encouraged to keep fighting. Masha, you are not alone!

The words "nobody is forgotten - nothing is forgotten" were written by Russian poet Olga Berggolts, a survivor of Stalin's purges and the Siege of Leningrad. They are carved in the wall of Piskaryevskoye Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

The entries here also appear, some in a slightly different form, on the Daily Bastardette and will continue to be posted there.

Please take a few minutes out of your day to visit this worthy ( and tragic) site.

Barb, for myself

Another Dead Adoptee

Bastardette has the story.

The Daily Bastardette: FOREVER FAMILY - FOREVER DEAD UPDATE: KIMBERLEY EMELYANTSEV PLEADS GUILTY#links

Yet another adoptor kills a defenseless child.

I have long said that people who wish to adopt should be required to undergo psychological assessment to evaluate them for the risk of interpersonal violence.

Again...This. Is. Why.

You'd think that people who wish to present adoption as some sort of altruistic institution instead of the booming business it is would be tripping over themselves to assure that their product is safe. You'd think that those who adopt would wish to assure that the children who go into adoption, are safe in adoption.

Tell me again: WHY are we waiting? How many more are going to die before we wake up and take commonsensical steps to protect children who go into adoption?


Barb, for myself

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Since you asked....

No.

Here's why.

1) You, with your dollars, continue to support an industry that exploits women so abjectly poor that they lose their children. Lose their children. With some support, these families could remain intact. That means that many of these adoptions are unnecessary. Unnecessary adoption is an evil in the way that unnecessary war is an evil. This is because adoption is war. War on poor women.

2) You continue to demonize, dehumanize, marginalize and otherwise project your own personal flaws on to pregnant women who are so poor that they find theselves faced with the prospect of losing their child to adoption. You use these projections to rationalize your actions. You want to maintain the charade of rationalization by making nice with your victim once you get what you want. You want her to be a good little girl , smile, and pop another bun out of the oven for you. You want her to tell you how wonderful you are when you're done emptying her womb. You want, demand, extort, cajole her to verbalize gratitude for her exploitation. You want to use language and social convention to conceal the fact that separation of mother and child by adoption is violent. This is violence done to her and her child for the sake of the dollars you provide. You fund this violence, this war, but you want to conceal that fact. In other words, you want her to make nice to support you in your denial.

Hasn't she already done enough for you?

You want more, more, more?

You need therapy, not adoption.

3) You continue to regard yourselves as some sort of saint, when in point of plain fact, the statistics say that your infertility is most likely the result of a lifestyle choice you made.

4) The injustices of the past have never been addressed. The exploitations of the present continue unabated.

No justice, no peace.

Barb, for myself

For Michelle

I received a comment in response to MEMEMEMEMEMEME. In fact, the post seems to have hit a nerve because I received two very NAW-STEE comments from adoptresses. Neither were publishable.

I did, however, get a nastygram from an adopted woman named Michelle. Michelle's comment was publishable, despite her statement that none of my five children have the right to exist.

In full, it read:

This has nothing to do with adoption and everything to do with a sad woman who needs help and should never have had children by birth or adoption. You and your
friends should really go out into the world to see just how children are really treated before you talk about ending adoption. You are right about one thing - everything in your blog is about YOUYOUYOUYOUYOU and not about children who need homes with families who love them (as a child I fit that description). As a person who gave up their child for adoption you have no right to tell a needy child they don't deserve a family who loves them and will care for them. NO right at all.

I'd like to respond to Michelle .

So Michelle,

I encourage you to visit http://www.babyscoopera.com/ for the down low on how the adoption industry took our children from us illegally, before you pass judgement. My labor was induced and my daughter was pulled out of my body with forceps while I was drugged and in four point leather restraints. The baby was spirited away, secreted from me. I never saw her, and never even heard her cry. This happened in a hospital delivery room in Cleveland Ohio, in December 1968. Contrary to what your letter implies, I wanted my baby. I refused to sign adoption papers. When I got out of the maternity reformatory, I immediately secured a job and a place to live. I went back to claim my baby, and the agency refused to hand her over. (Please note, I was her legal mother.) When I refused to sign surrender papers, the social wrecker assigned to my case threatened to have me involuntarily committed to the local county mental hospital. I know women who were committed, drugged, given shock treatments because they refused to sign papers.

There was nothing wrong with us. We were not neurotic. We were pregnant, and that is all. I happened to be pregnant via rape, but most of the women I know were simply pregnant by their boyfriends. Pregnant teens... one of the most common stories the human race has to offer. We committed no crime except being pregnant and unmarried in an era when women did not enjoy the equal protection of the law... at least in this country. Young women of that era also did not enjoy the technological advances of reproductive medicine that exist today. We were subjected to the religious and misogynistic whims of a society that looked upon women as nothing more than vessels for the desires of a man. There were few to no women physicians, lawyers, business professionals in those days. The legal reforms of the 1970s changed all that ...and put an end to The Baby Scoop Era, as well.

But for those of us caught up in it, it was and continues to be, a living hell.

The impact of the excesses we experienced at the hands of the adoption industry have lasted for our lifetimes. All the research shows that the aftermath of adoption loss lasts a lifetime. It is an irresolvable loss.

For us, and for many people, adoption is the gift that keeps on giving.

This is why we work at educating people about the adoption industry. It's not about MEMEME. It's about human rights. It's about the right of Anywoman, anywhere, to raise her own child.

NO ONE should have to suffer the way we, our husbands and our children, have because of the untested hypotheses of a discipline like social work. Their theory was that unmarried mothers were neurotic sex delinquents whose most pressing need was social rehabilitation.

Obviously, they were wrong.

The industry used to be able to abuse women in this way - and they got away with it. Since they can no longer get away with locking women into maternity reformatories, taking away all their civil and human rights and stripping them of their babies, these days they use marketing to sell adoption plans to pregnant women.

I encourage you to look at our website and read more on the blog, especially the entry called "Second Verse Not the Same As the First"

http://babyscoopera.blogspot.com/2008/04/second-verse-not-same-as-first.html



and "Marketing Adoption"

http://babyscoopera.blogspot.com/2008/02/marketing-adoption.html for more information.


Barb, for myself