Maternity during adolescence: cause or consequence of dropping out? Some evidence from Southern Cone countries

SANTILLÁN PIZARRO, MARÍA MARTA ; ROJAS CABRERA, ELEONORA; RIBOTTA, BRUNO; ORTEGA, DANIEL

Busan

Congreso; XXVII IUSSP International Population Conference; 2013

International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP)

Even though fertility during adolescence can be considered to favor dropping out, recent research suggests that maternity might constitute a life plan for those young women who live in contexts in which education is limited and rejected, or who lack (other) choices for the future. Considering this dilemma, we try to identify the prevailing order of the events, maternity and dropping out, in Southern Cone countries (Argentina and Uruguay). These countries do not have data collection instruments which allow for revealing the chronological order of the events. Nonetheless, it is possible to carry out an approximation exercise with census and household surveys data from the information about the educational situation, the number of school years completed, the young woman´s age, her current fertility (children born during the last year) and retrospective fertility (total number of children). We use data of the Argentinean census (2001) and Household Survey of Uruguay (2006). At the same time, we are interested in finding out if becoming a mother has a different impact on the education of teenagers (and vice versa) according to their socioeconomic level, and the cultural and geographical sector they belong to.