The name is absent

A major reason for the age pattern in financial circumstances is the age at motherhood
pattern in the chances of the woman or her partner being employed. Thus the early
mothers, if in a couple, are most likely to be in a ‘workless couple’, and least likely to
have full-time employment 9 months after the cohort child was born.

Table 4 shows a selection of indicators of the living environment at the time of the
survey. The early mothers are most likely to live in council accommodation, in a flat
rather than a house, and are least likely to have access to a garden. They are also most
likely to complain about the quality of the neighbourhood. The majority of those who
started childbearing under 21 are currently living in the ethnic or other disadvantaged
neighbourhoods, (around 6 in 10) compared with around one quarter of the two eldest
groups.

Some of these profiles will be analysed in the next section. The others illustrate some of
the many ways in which material conditions happen to vary systematically with age at
first birth. The similarity, not shown, of the relationships where the first birth had taken
place only nine months before the survey and those where it occurred some years
previously suggests that the disadvantages associated with early motherhood persist into
later stages of family formation.

Table 5 presents some glimpses of further information about the pregnancy and its
outcome which is also not explicitly included in the modelling which follows. We

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