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<p>This dissertation consists of two original empirical studies on the determinants
of teenage childbearing in the United States. The first study examines the impact
of educational attainment on teenage childbearing, using school entry laws as an instrument
for education and a highly detailed North Carolina administrative dataset that links
birth certificate data to school administrative records. I show that being born after
the school entry cutoff date affects educational success in offsetting ways, with
a negative impact on years of education but positive impact on test scores. Using
an IV regression strategy to distinguish the impacts of years of education and test
scores, I show that both educational measures have negative impacts on teenage childbearing.</p><p>The
second study examines potential causes of the decline in the U.S. teenage birth rate
between 1991 and 2010. Using age-period-cohort models with Vital Statistics birth
data and Census population counts, I show that the decline was driven by period changes
in the early 1990s but by cohort changes between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s. I also
use a difference-in-differences model to investigate the extent to which social policies
in the 1970s-1980s can explain these cohort changes. The evidence suggests that while
legalization of abortion for adult women and unilateral divorce laws had a significant
impact on teenage birth rates in the 1990s-2000s, abortion legalization is unlikely
to be a major explanation for the observed decline.</p>
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