THE FORTUNES OF ADOLESCENT MOTHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN - THE TRANSMISSION OF POVERTY IN SANTIAGO, CHILE

Six years after a group of low-income adolescent mothers in Santiago. Chile had given birth to their first child, 42 percent of the fathers had abandoned their children. The authors gathered retrospective life-histories on these mothers and used indicators of child well-being to examine patterns of family formation and the reproduction of poverty in mother-child pairs. While the extended family shelters mother and child, it does not seem to compensate for the cost, in terms of child well-being, of abandonment by the father. Mothers' additional years of schooling, however, and the percentage of family income they earn have a positive effect on their children, suggesting that improved educational and income-earning opportunities for young mothers can contain the intergenerational transmission of poverty.