Regional teenager fertility differentials: a retrospective analysis

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to analyze, from a regional perspective, changes and permanencies in socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of women from two different birth cohorts who had their first child during their teenagers’ years. The characteristics of these women are compared with those of women of the same generation, but who did not have a child during adolescence. Microdata from the Demographic Brazilian Censuses of 1980 and 2010 was used to reconstruct birth histories. The results indicate that the characteristics of women who had children while in their teenagers’ years are, in general, different from those who had children after 20 years of age or had no children. However, among the analyzed socioeconomic and demographic variables, the only one that can be negatively associated with teen pregnancy is education, because despite the increased educational coverage observed in the country, in the two periods analyzed, teenager mothers had more difficulty to fully complete their education.