Center for Social Development INDIVIDUAL, FAMILY AND NEIGHBORHOOD INFLUENCES ON TEEN CHILDBEARING: A LIFE OPTIONS APPROACH

The authors gratefully acknowledge the comments and recommendations of Sondra Beverly on an earlier draft of this manuscript. 1Introduction For decades, the U.S. has led the Western industrialized world in the rate of births to teenagers (Moore, Miller, Glei & Morrison, 1995). This rate of teen childbearing compounds a number of problems. Even after controlling for prior socioeconomic disadvantage, teenage mothers are less likely to graduate from high school and more likely to be poor (Hoffman, Foster & Furstenberg, 1993). In addition, children born to younger teen mothers (17 and younger) are at a significant disadvantage in terms of cognitive development and academic achievement when compared with children whose mothers were 20 to 21 at the time of their birth (Moore, Morrison & Greene, 1997). In the 1990s, research on teen pregnancy has focused increasingly on structural influences on adolescent sexual behavior (Brewster, Billy & Grady, 1993; Ku, Sonenstein & Pleck, 1993). Studies provide compelling evidence that this behavior is not just shaped by individual- and family-level characteristics, but also by the surrounding social context (Billy, Brewster & Grady, 1994). While teen pregnancy occurs in all types of communities (Luker