Minimum Wages and Teenage Childbearing: New Estimates Using a Dynamic Difference-in-Differences Approach

The minimum wage is increasingly viewed as an important tool for improving public health outcomes, including reducing childbearing among teenagers. Taken at face value, recently reported estimates suggest that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour could reduce the number of teenage births by 35,000 per year. Using an event study framework that accounts for dynamic and heterogeneous treatment effects, we find little evidence that minimum wages are causally related to teenage childbearing. Moreover, the estimated effects of minimum wages on teenage sexual behaviors, including contraception use, abstinence, and number of partners are consistently small and statistically insignificant.