published in: Journal of African Economies, 2019, 28 (3), 277–303
Women represent the majority of informal sector workers in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where adolescent pregnancy rates are high. Little empirical evidence exists concerning the relationship between teen fertility and the likelihood that a woman will be employed in the informal sector. Using a panel survey in Madagascar designed to capture the transition from adolescence to adulthood, we estimate a multinomial logit model to capture the effect of the timing of first birth on female selection into four categories: non-participation, informal, formal, and student. To address the endogeneity of fertility and labor market outcomes, we instrument the timing of first birth using young women's community-level access, and duration of exposure to family planning. Our results suggest that motherhood increases the probability of employment for young women and that women whose first birth occurs during adolescence largely select into low-quality informal jobs. This effect is partially, but not entirely, mediated by the effect of teen pregnancy on schooling.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.