Few young mothers are engaging in education

Few young mothers are engaging in education

17 November 2015

Teenage mothers are nearly three times less likely to be in education than their peers without children, Statistics New Zealand said today.

Young mothers in the New Zealand workforce 1994–2014 shows that while 82 percent of 15–19-year-old women without dependent children were in education, just 29 percent of mothers the same age were. Most teenage mothers in this group were aged 18–19 years.

For slightly older mothers, aged 20–24 years, 18 percent were in education compared with 45 percent of their peers without children. This age group of young mothers was three times more likely than their peers to not have any qualifications.

“This is in line with the picture internationally,” social statistics manager Diane Ramsay said.

“Young mothers are less likely to be in education or employment, and to have one of the highest unemployment rates. The education picture is particularly important because in a labour market that increasingly requires people to have higher qualifications, missing out on education may limit young mothers’ employment prospects, and career development through their lives.”

For women aged 15–24 years, 60 percent of those who were sole parents and 50 percent of partnered mothers were not in employment, education, or training (NEET). Just 10 percent of this age group who were women without children were NEET – the same rate as for young men.

“This is mainly due to young mothers spending their time on childcare. This is clearly very important work, but we also see that with around one-third of young mothers being unemployed, many want to be in paid work but aren’t able to,” Ms Ramsay said.

Other findings from the report:
Young mothers are more likely to be sole parents than older mothers are.
Young Māori women are more likely to be mothers than young women of other ethnicities are.
Young sole-parenting mothers have one of the highest unemployment rates, although this has decreased from 54 percent in 1994 to 34 percent in 2014.

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