Timothy Taylor’s post is based on an article by Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine in the journal Taylor helps to edit.

The cause-and-effect evidence here suggests that for many women who give birth as teenagers, their life outcomes like level of education achieved, income, employment, and chance of marriage are already so constrained that they are not made worse off by having a child as a teenager. Encouragement about contraception or abstinence can help reduce teen pregnancy on the margin. But what many teen girls from low socioeconomic status backgrounds need is a reduced prospect of marginalization, and a greater chance for personal and economic advancement.

Read the whole thing.