Children having children: early motherhood and offspring human capital in India

Abstract

Using panel data from India, this paper investigates the effect of early maternal age on offspring human capital, contributing to the scarce evidence on this phenomenon, especially in the context of a developing country. The analysis relies on mother fixed effects to allow for unobserved differences between mothers and employs a variety of empirical strategies to address remaining sibling-specific concerns. Our results indicate that children born to young mothers are shorter for their age, with stronger effects for girls born to very young mothers. We also find some evidence suggesting that children born to very young mothers perform worse in math. By exploring the evolution of effects over time for the first time in the literature, we find that the height effect weakens as children age. Further analysis suggests both biological and behavioral factors as transmission channels.

Determinants of gender gaps in youth employment in urban Mozambique

“…Channels via which positive effects of improved labour market outcomes of women might materialize include additional household income (Galor and Weil, 1996), increases in human capital (Klasen and Lamanna 2009), and positive demographic effects (Behrman and Gonalons-Pons 2020;Bloom et al 2003;Bongaarts et al 2019). Improved labour market outcomes for women also lead to an increase in women's agency and decisionmaking power (Annan et al 2019;Kabeer 2008) and, as a result, to potential improvements in children's nutrition, health, and education outcomes (Chari et al 2017;Perez-Alvarez and Favara 2020;Quisumbing 2003).…”