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The effect of pregnancy intention on child development
T J Joyce1, R Kaestner, S Korenman
1NBER, New York, NY 10016-4309, USA.
Insights
Unwanted pregnancies correlate with adverse maternal behaviors, but show little impact on birth weight or child cognition. Controlling for family background significantly reduces these associations, with no differences found for mistimed pregnancies.
Area of Science:
- Sociology
- Public Health
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- Understanding the impact of pregnancy intentions on child well-being is crucial for public health initiatives.
- Previous studies often lack robust methods to control for confounding family factors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the empirical link between unintended pregnancy and child health and development.
- To control for unmeasured familial factors using sibling data.
Main Methods:
- Utilized data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
- Employed sibling comparisons to mitigate confounding variables.
- Analyzed associations between pregnancy intention, maternal behaviors, and child outcomes.
Main Results:
- Unwanted pregnancy is linked to negative maternal behaviors during pregnancy and postpartum.
- Little association was found between unwanted pregnancy and birth weight or child cognitive scores.
- The link between unwanted pregnancy and maternal behaviors diminished substantially after controlling for family background.
- No significant differences in maternal behaviors or child outcomes were observed between mistimed and wanted pregnancies.
Conclusions:
- While unwanted pregnancy is associated with detrimental maternal behaviors, its direct impact on infant birth weight and child cognition is minimal.
- Family background significantly influences the observed associations, highlighting the importance of socioeconomic and environmental factors.
- Pregnancy intention (wanted, mistimed, or unwanted) does not appear to be a significant determinant of maternal behaviors or child development outcomes when controlling for unmeasured family characteristics.
Abstract:
In this paper, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to investigate the empirical link between unintended pregnancy and child health and development. An important contribution of our study is the use of information on siblings to control for unmeasured factors that may confound estimates of the effect of pregnancy intentions on infant and child outcomes. Results from our study indicate that unwanted pregnancy is associated with prenatal and postpartum maternal behaviors that adversely affect infant and child health, but that unwanted pregnancy has little association with birth weight and child cognitive outcomes. Estimates of the association between unwanted pregnancy and maternal behaviors were greatly reduced after controls for unmeasured family background were included in the model. Our results also indicate that there are no significant differences in maternal behaviors or child outcomes between mistimed and wanted pregnancies.