Teenage Pregnancy and Opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean

World Bank. Teenage pregnancy and opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean: on early childbearing, poverty and economic achievement. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012.

In the fall of 2011, a wave of TV crews and newspaper reporters surprised the people of Toppensih, Washington. The media onslaught was seeking out Gaby Rodriguez, a Hispanic high school senior who made national headlines as the girl who faked her own pregnancy for a senior project. The 17-year-old Gaby announced her pregnancy and then analyzed the reactions of all she encountered over the next six months. A few key allies—including her mother, who designed her “extended belly,” and the school principal—remained silent in support of her experiment.

The pregnancy project sought to expose the existence, and challenge the validity, of stereotypes about Hispanic women. The charade explored the underlying motivations of the many who responded with a wide range of reactions. The author explains, “If you are to understand my story, I first need to tell you about my family and where I grew up.” Teenage pregnancy elicits diverse responses that require understanding a complex combination of circumstances, social conditions and background.

Many people expressed no surprise that Gaby was pregnant. She was the daughter of a teenage mom of Hispanic origin who had worked as a low-paid mechanic even while pregnant. Gaby had grown up in an environment where early child bearing was only natural. But not everybody shared this view. Gaby herself burst into tears when her science teacher, who considered her an excellent student with a vital future, expressed disappointment over her seemingly lost opportunities for a better life. The honest tears, she tells the readers, only added realism to the scene.

In some way, understanding the social dynamics and the diversity of reactions that her innovative scheme generated is at the core of the chapters that follow. The present report acknowledges first the complexity of the conditions associated with teenage pregnancy and early childbearing. It then attempts to build a framework that explores these issues in a systematic way in order to create the elements necessary to design effective policy interventions.

The specific objectives of this regional study are:

i) To establish a thorough description of the magnitude of the issue and its potential implications for social advancement;

ii) To advance the understanding of the risk factors, motivations and impacts at the household level–as a determinant of poverty and a cause of intra- and inter-generational poverty traps;

iii) To illuminate the coping mechanisms and their individual and social implications;

iv) To highlight the gender-related issues that have historically provoked asymmetric costs to boys and girls, and

v) To provide elements that support specific policies on this matter. The regional study achieves these objectives through the following sections:

(i) Section 1 presents stylized facts on teen pregnancy with special attention to the historical trends and profiles from both LAC and the rest of the world. It also offers a systematic framework to study adolescent fertility choices and a discussion on related methodological issues.

(ii) Section 2 investigates the factors that influence fertility decisions in general, as well as their relationship to poverty, employment conditions and social context. The crux of the analysis is an epidemiological risk-factors approach. While this analysis does not seek to establish causality, it does identify a set of risk factors that policies can potentially influence. From an epidemiological framework, the crucial intent is to identify the combination of circumstances that induce a higher likelihood of the event rather than the magnitude of marginal effects.

(iii) Section 3 evaluates the current economic costs of teen pregnancy for individuals, households and society in terms of lost income, employment and educational achievement. Given data limitations, it is possible only in some cases to establish the effects on mobility and poverty traps that this type of shock has on household welfare (the parents and siblings of teenage pregnant women), partners and children, in addition to the long-term impact on the young mothers themselves.

(iv) Section 4 provides a non-exhaustive summary of the main policy experience in implementing interventions to prevent teenage pregnancy and support teenage mothers. It includes new evidence on the effect of CCT and extended-hours programs in reducing teenage pregnancy.

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