Sex education and the effect on teen pregnancy

Thesis (M.A., Economics) -- California State University, Sacramento, 2010.This study uses the National Educational Longitudinal Study from 1988 to assess whether the probability a teen girl becomes pregnant is related to sex education taught in school. It is an important question. Teen pregnancy costs the United States at least $7 billion a year. Some people speculate we should educate our children about sex to reduce the rate of teen pregnancy. Others argue sex education may cause an increase in teen pregnancies. \ud This study consists of two parts. First, this study tests to determine if sex education is endogenous, that is whether a high rate of teen pregnancies in a community leads to policies promoting sex education programs. A two-stage least squares model is used to address the endogeniety concern. The Hausman test for endogeniety fails to reject exogeniety. \ud \ud \ud \ud \ud The analysis proceeds by conducting panel data analysis involving grade fixed effects. By using fixed effects, the analysis can control for differences over each grade that affects all students similarly. The results from this latter analysis fail to show a causal link between sex education and teen pregnancy.Economic