Impact on the mother

Being a young mother in an industrialized country can affect one's education. Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of high school.^[6] Recent studies, though, have found that many of these mothers had already dropped out of school prior to becoming pregnant, but those in school at the time of their pregnancy were as likely to graduate as their peers.^{[citation needed]} One study in 2001 found that women who gave birth during their teens completed secondary-level schooling 10–12% as often and pursued post-secondary education 14–29% as often as women who waited until age 30.^[72] Young motherhood in an industrialized country can affect employment and social class. Less than one third of teenage mothers receive any form of child support, vastly increasing the likelihood of turning to the government for assistance.^[73] The correlation between earlier childbearing and failure to complete high school reduces career opportunities for many young women.^[6] One study found that, in 1988, 60% of teenage mothers were impoverished at the time of giving birth.^[74] Additional research found that nearly 50% of all adolescent mothers sought social assistance within the first five years of their child's life.^[6] A study of 100 teenaged mothers in the United Kingdom found that only 11% received a salary, while the remaining 89% were unemployed.^[75] Most British teenage mothers live in poverty, with nearly half in the bottom fifth of the income distribution.^[76] Teenage women who are pregnant or mothers are seven times more likely to commit suicide than other teenagers.^[77] Professor John Ermisch at the institute of social and economic research at Essex University and Dr Roger Ingham, director of the centre of sexual health at Southampton University – found that comparing teenage mothers with other girls with similarly deprived social-economic profiles, bad school experiences and low educational aspirations, the difference in their respective life chances was negligible.^[78]
Teenage Motherhood may actually make economic sense for poorer young women, some research suggests. For instance, long-term studies by Duke economist V. Joseph Hotz and colleagues, published in 2005, found that by age 35, former teen moms had earned more in income, paid more in taxes, were substantially less likely to live in poverty and collected less in public assistance than similarly poor women who waited until their 20s to have babies. Women who became mothers in their teens — freed from child-raising duties by their late 20s and early 30s to pursue employment while poorer women who waited to become moms were still stuck at home watching their young children — wound up paying more in taxes than they had collected in welfare.^[79] Eight years earlier, the federally commissioned report "Kids Having Kids" also contained a similar finding, though it was buried: "Adolescent childbearers fare slightly better than later-childbearing counterparts in terms of their overall economic welfare."^{[citation needed]}
One-fourth of adolescent mothers will have a second child within 24 months of the first. Factors that determine which mothers are more likely to have a closely-spaced repeat birth include marriage and education: the likelihood decreases with the level of education of the young woman – or her parents – and increases if she gets married.<sup>[80]

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