Long Term Performance of Young Mothers and Their Children in Denmark: Labour Market, Health Care and Prescription Drugs

This paper uses a register dataset for the entire Danish population to examine the effect of early motherhood on labour market measures, health care measures and family measures for the mothers and their offspring. The dataset is divided into three groups according to the age of the woman at the time of her first child delivery. Using standard cross-sectional econometric techniques the results show that very young mothers (aged 16-21) have significantly lower employment rates, higher propensity to receive welfare benefits and a lower wage income. Children of very young mothers have a higher family replacement rate, more services received from General Practitioners and a higher propensity to receive ADHD-medications. The majority of the effects reported are also significantly greater for mothers who were aged 22-25 at the birth of their first child compared to older mothers.