Teenage childbearing and welfare: preventive and ameliorative strategies

The results of seven computer simulations suggest that strategies to prevent teenage childbearing may be more effective in reducing the number of young women who require welfare assistance than are strategies to improve the circumstances of teenagers who have already given birth. The first simulation constitutes a baseline projection, in which current levels and patterns of adolescent childbearing are assumed to continue to 1990. Three "preventive" simulations assume that no births or fewer births occur among teenagers during the projection period; and three "ameliorative" simulations assume that changes occur in the completed family size, marriage rate and educational attainment of teenage childbearers. Compared with the baseline projection, the three preventive strategies are estimated to reduce by 22-48 percent the number of adolescent childbearers who, as 20-24-year-olds in 1990, will be receiving welfare payments; the three ameliorative strategies cause only a 6-12 percent drop. The strategy with the least impact is the education scenario, in which adolescent mothers are assumed to be no more likely to drop out of school than are other comparable teenagers. The primary reason for the surprisingly small effect appears to be the relatively low earnings of women--even when they are high school graduates. All of the experimental scenarios tested, however, bring about at least some reduction in projected government spending for the three major public assistance programs considered (Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid and Food Stamps).