Examining policies toward adolescent pregnancies across Africa: What is the relationship between religion and education policy?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Pregnancy is life altering for women. For an adolescent girl, a pregnancy can set her on a radically different life trajectory, potentially toward a life of poverty. Across the world, governments differ in the way they respond to teenage pregnancy, especially in light of policies toward schoolgirls finishing their education. We explore how religion correlates with policy and practice toward teenage pregnancy, examining whether teenage moms are supported if they want to return to school after giving birth. We consider whether the predominant religion in a country corresponded to the type of policies that were passed. We use Gallup World data to predict whether a country that criminalizes or expels pregnant schoolgirls by their self-reported religion. We also run a simple ordinary least squares regression to estimate a linear probability model with the outcome that indicates whether the country expels pregnant teens from school or considers teen pregnancy a criminal expense. Findings indicate that countries that were primarily Protestant Christian were much more likely to have restorative policies toward girls who were pregnant or had given birth, supporting them if they decided to pursue school completion.