Table 1.
OLS Estimates of the Effect of Early Teen Marriage and Dropping Out of High School on Poverty, Using Individual and Grouped Data (dependent variable = poor)
| OLS Estimates |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Variable | (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) |
| Early Teen Marriage | 0.043* (0.005) | 0.037* (0.003) | 0.033* (0.002) | 0.032* (0.002) | 0.029* (0.002) |
| High School Dropout | 0.134* (0.010) | 0.125* (0.007) | 0.122* (0.007) | 0.121* (0.007) | 0.123* (0.007) |
| Control Variables | |||||
| Census year, race, and age dummy variables | X | X | X | X | |
| State of birth and birth cohort dummy variables | X | X | X | ||
| Region of birth trends | X | X | |||
| Allocated Observations Included | X | ||||
| R2 | .041 | .079 | .082 | .082 | .084 |
| Number of observations | 3,256,434 | 3,256,434 | 3,256,434 | 3,256,434 | 3,489,385 |
| Grouped OLS Estimates |
|||||
| Variable | (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) |
| Early Teen Marriage | 1.065* (0.135) | 0.453* (0.090) | 0.329* (0.063) | 0.264* (0.054) | 0.071† (0.041) |
| High School Dropout | 0.026 (0.022) | 0.119* (0.029) | 0.166* (0.024) | 0.129* (0.035) | 0.136* (0.033) |
| Control Variables | |||||
| Census year, race, and age dummy variables | X | X | X | X | |
| State of birth and birth cohort dummy variables | X | X | X | ||
| Region of birth trends | X | X | |||
| Allocated Observations Included | X | ||||
| R2 | .421 | .815 | .871 | .874 | .884 |
| Observations (number of cells) | 3,567 | 3,567 | 3,567 | 3,567 | 3,567 |
Notes: Standard errors, adjusted for clustering by state of birth to account for arbitrary autocorrelation over time, are shown in parentheses. Data are from the 1960, 1970, and 1980 U.S. censuses. The sample is restricted to women between the ages of 20 and 60 who were born in one of the 41 states with valid marriage, compulsory schooling, and child labor laws. The dependent variable, poor, is a dummy variable equal to 1 if the woman currently lives in a family that is at or below the poverty line. Early teen marriage is defined as marrying between the ages of 12 and 15 (14 or 15 in the 1970 and 1980 censuses), and high school dropout is defined as fewer than 12 years of completed schooling. Year dummy variables are indicators for each of the three census years, race is a dummy variable for whether the respondent is white, and current age dummy variables are single-year indicators for a woman’s current age. Dummy variables for state of birth are indicators for each of the 41 states, and dummy variables for cohort of birth are single-year indicators for each birth cohort. Region of birth trends are separate linear cohort year trends for each of the four birth regions. In the second panel, the data are aggregated to state of birth × year of birth × census year cell means. Allocated observations refer to observations whose value for the variable age at first marriage has been logically edited or hot decked by the Census Bureau.
p < .10;
p < .05