#Female teenage models driver#

Despite increasing rates of women entering the labor force, evidence suggests that they typically earn less, work in less productive jobs, and are more likely to work in unpaid or informal employment than their male counterparts. Recent decades simultaneously witnessed increasing rates of female participation in the labor market and declining fertility across the globe ( Heath and Jayachandran, 2016).

#Female teenage models driver#

Women’s economic opportunities are both an important outcome and driver of successful economic development ( Duflo, 2012). This effect is partially, but not entirely, mediated by the effect of teen childbearing on schooling. Our results suggest that motherhood increases the probability of employment and that women whose first birth occurs during adolescence are mostly employed into low-quality informal jobs. To address the endogeneity of fertility and labor market outcomes, we instrument timing of first birth using women’s community-level access, and duration of exposure to family planning. Using longitudinal data from Madagascar designed to capture the transition from adolescence to adulthood, we estimate a multinomial logit model to capture the effect of the timing of first birth on female selection into four categories: non-participation, informal employment, formal employment, and student.

Little empirical evidence exists concerning the causal relationship between teen fertility and the likelihood of informal employment. It is also the case that the region is characterised by high adolescent pregnancy rates.

Women represent the majority of informal workers in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.