Issues in the Estimation of Causal Effects in Population Research, with an Application to the Effects of Teenage Childbearing

Abstract

Population research has a distinguished history of empirical work on a wide variety of important topics related to population growth, the components of demographic trends, estimation of vital rates, life table construction, investigation into causes of historical population developments, and many others. However, one branch of population research that has seen increasing interest has been in the area of social demography, where the determinants of individual behavior regarding fertility, marriage, and related areas has been studied. It is in that branch that issues of causal inference have arisen, and with which this essay is concerned.