Teen births up for first time in 15 years

[jimrtex]

Uh huh... so explain why teen births have been going down in the past.

It appears that the fertility rate for 18-19 YO tracks the birth rate for 20-24 YO fairly closely (a little over 70%), and the birth rate for 20-24 YO has been declining over the same period, until it also increased in the last couple of years.  The number of births to 19 YO is 41% higher than 18 YO, which also indicates that the characterization of 19 YO as "teenagers" is somewhat arbitrary.   The fertility rate for 25-29 YO women has been fairly steady, and for 30+ YO women has continued to increase over the period, so that the US reached a total fertility rate above 2.1 (replacement level) for the first time since 1971.

It also appears that among Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites that the fertility rate for unmarried 18-19 YO has not been declining or perhaps even increased a small amount.  That is, the decrease in the overall rate is due to either a decreased fertility rate among married teenagers, or more like a decrease in the percentage of married teenagers.  Among Blacks, the overall rate and the unmarried rate have both declined, but the decrease in the overall rate was greater (note that 90%+ of 18-19 YO Black mothers are unmarried).

From 1990 to 2005

Hispanic unmarried, 107.5 to 112.4
Hispanic total, 147.7 to 134.6

White, non-Hispanic unmarried, 37.0 to 37.4
White, non-Hispanic total 66.0 to 48.0

Black, non-Hispanic unmarried, 143.7 to 101.6
Black, non-Hispanic total, 157.5-103.9

[jimrtex]

The only causal relationship is that during the late 1980s, there was a push to teach more comprehensive sex education in schools because the AIDS epidemic was spreading so quickly and teenage pregnancies were rising and rising and rising.

Soon after these teaching practices began to change, AIDS began to decline and teen pregnancies began to decline.

Then, when federal rules stipulated that abstinence should be the cornerstone of sex education lest you lose federal funding (and I know of several public schools where condoms and other contraceptives are frowned upon as I know two people who actually teach sex ed in schools)..

And now teen pregnancies have slowed in their decline and have now risen for the first time since 1991.

I'd ask you, Bono, what is causing this turn around in the trend?

If it were related to a change in educational practices, one would expect that the birth rate would have decreased first among younger women in the early 1990s.  In fact, the decline began first among women in their 20's.  Over a 5 year period in the early 1990's the birth rate dropped 9.5% among women 25-29, 7.6% among women 20-24, and 9.9% among women 18-19.

So what your claim is, that soon after 17 and 18 YO began receiving more comprehensive sex education the birth rate among 21 and 22 YO began to drop, and then a year or two later it began to drop among those who had actually received the more comprehensive sex education.  So what is your causal explanation?  Perhaps: Those in their early 20's were more sexually active, and thus were responsive to the education that their younger sisters were receiving?  And then they began to influence their younger sisters?

And then the birth rate among those 20-24 began to rise, followed a year or two later for those 18 and 19.  This was after an increase in abstinence-only education.  So what is your causal explanation?  Perhaps: Those in their early 20's who had received the comprehensive sex education found something missing in their personal relationships, and were responsive to the abstinence education their younger sisters were receiving.  But they were not able to actually able to practice abstinence, and more became pregnant.  And then the younger sisters who had actually received the abstinence education began to emulate them?

Or how about women in their early 20's have always had the highest birth rate.  19 YO are more similar to 20 YO than they are 17 YO, and you would not expect a discontinuity between 20 and 19, simply because we use the decimal system.  And while there has been a slight upward shift in the peak age, 19 is still very close to the peak, and a rise in births among women in their 20s would expect to see a similar increase among those 19.  The ratio of births to 17:18:19 YO mothers changed from 54:79:100 in 1998 to 45:71:100 in 2005.  Births declined by 25% for 17 YO, 16% for 18 YO, and 5% for 19 YO.  But this change in distribution also makes the "teen" birth rate more comparable to the 20 to 24 YO birth rate that has been rising.

Much of the decline in the teen birth rate has been due to a decrease in marriage by teenagers (married teenagers have higher birth rates).  That is, the overall decline in the the teen birth rate was less due to changes in the birth rate among population subgroups with different birth rates, but rather the relative distribution of the subgroups.  But this effect is declinining as the share of teenagers who are married has shrunk.  In addition, a larger share of 18 YO and 19 YO mothers are Black and/or Hispanic, both groups with significantly higher teen birth rates than Whites.  A change in distribution here can also lead to an increase in the overall birth rate.

[jimrtex]

the first impact of abstinence only education was for the trend of the birthrate dropping slowed down.  In the past few years some still did have some sex education so that may have stopped it from reversing itself, but others did not which resulted in the rate dropping at a lower rate.  Now since asbstinence education has been around for a few years teens don't have the comprehensive sex education some got a little of a few years ago, so the rates are starting to rise.

Could you provide some years when you think this happened?

[jimrtex]

Actually Bono, as much as you might like to think that you have intellectual argument here, there logical line could be drawn that many people who are 14/15/16 now are the ones who have been exposed to abstinence programs. Include with the increase in the rate of STI/D's over the last couple of years.

And this explains why the trends in birth rates from 18 and 19 YO are similar to that for 20 to 24 YO?  If you are going to argue causality, you need to provide an explanation why birth rates for 20 to 24 YO began to drop at about the time (actually slightly before) more comprehensive sex education programs began for 14-17 YO, and that birth rates for this older group also began to rise sooner.

[jimrtex]

Teen pregnancies are much higher in the south than they are in the northeast.  Of course, the south is also poorer, but that is clearly not the only contributing factor.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/teen_preg_stats.html

The states with the highest pregnancy rate among Black teenagers: are DE, MN, NJ, NY, OH, OR, PA, and WI.  There appears to be less variation in pregnancy rates among Hispanic teenagers, but the rate is high in all areas.  On the other hand, pregnancy rates among Anglos is greater in the South.

Black teenagers are 4.5 times more likely to become pregnant than White teenagers in Minnesota, while the ratio is only 2:1 in Mississippi.

[jimrtex]

Do you have any proof that declining marriage rates among teenagers has led to reduced birth rates?

If this is so, then teen marriage would have to have risen from the early 1970s through the late 1980s before dropping off in the '90s.

Vital Statistics of the United States, 2002, Volume I, Natality Table 1-18. Birth rates for unmarried women by age of mother, according to race and Hispanic origin: United States, specified years 1940-55 and each year 1960-2002

Vital Statistics of the United States, 2002, Volume I, Natality Table 1-19. Birth rates for married women by age of mother, according to race and Hispanic origin: United States, specified years 1940-55 and each year 1960-2002

Vital Statistics of the United States, 2002, Volume I, Natality Table 1-7. Total fertility rates and birth rates, by age of mother and race: United States, 1940-2002

Year   Unm.   Marr  Total  %Unm.
1970   22.4  121.1   68.3   53.5%
1975   23.9   92.1   55.6   53.5%
1980   27.6   97.0   53.0   63.4%
1985   31.4   93.3   51.0   68.3%
1990   42.5   93.2   59.9   65.7%
1991   44.6   89.6   61.8   61.8%
1995   43.8   82.6   56.0   68.6%
2000   39.0   87.4   47.7   82.0%
2002   35.4   86.3   43.0   85.1%

The teen birth rate declined from the 1960s through the mid-1980s, along with the overall birth rate.  The peak in 1991 was a local maximum, not an all time maximum as reported in the news media.  In the late 80s and early 90s, the birth rate for unmarried teenagers dramatically increased, which caused an increase in the overall rate, even though the rate for married teenagers remaned about the same.  The rate increase, which occured across a wide range of ages was quite dramatic, and I doubt had anything to do with a change in sex education curricula.

Note that from 1991 to 2002, the rate for married has decreased by 3.3/1000 and for unmarried 9.2/1000, but overall the rate has declined 18.8/1000.  But with relatively few married teenagers (down from 45% to 15%) the effect of changes in distribution will be much less,

See Figure 6 on Page 10This illustrates what I was saying about the 18-19 YO birth rate tracking the 20 to 24 YO birth rate.  In 2002, the number of births to 19 YO was closer to all ages between 20 and 35 than it was to 18 YO.  While there has been some separation in the 18-19 and 20-24 YO rates since 1991; there is still tracking.  Note that the peak for 20-24 YO in 1999 corresponds to a flattening for 18-19 YO.  When the rate for 20-24 turned down, then the decline for 18-19 YO increased.  And now that there is another increase for 20-24 YO, there is an increase for 18-19 YO (and since the 1990s, the 18-19 YO rate has shifted toward 19 YO being a larger share, so that it should follow the 20-24 YO rate closer.

Whatever caused the increased birth rate for 20 to 24 YO, also caused the increased birth rate for 18 and 19 YO.

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And the highest pregnancy rates for Black teenagers are in the North which presumably has more comprehensive sex education and less abstinence-only education than in the southern US.

[jimrtex]

And this explains why the trends in birth rates from 18 and 19 YO are similar to that for 20 to 24 YO?  If you are going to argue causality, you need to provide an explanation why birth rates for 20 to 24 YO began to drop at about the time (actually slightly before) more comprehensive sex education programs began for 14-17 YO, and that birth rates for this older group also began to rise sooner.

Because women had more access to birth control and other contraceptives so they could delay child birth until they were ready to have children.  There are many things that have led to the decline in birth rates for 20-24 year old women.. but it has been uniform across all industrialized nations with women aged 25-29 and 30-34 having more children while younger women use birth control so they can finish schooling, start a career.. whatever.

When the birth rate for 20 to 24 YO increased beginning in 1988 it was caused by?

When the birth rate to 18 and 19 YO increased beginning in 1988 it was caused by?

When the birth rate for 20 to 24 YO declined beginning in 1991 it was caused by?

When the birth rate for 18 and 19 YO declined beginning in 1992 it was caused by?

When the birth rate for 20 to 24 YO began increasing in 2005 it was caused by?

When the birth rate for 18 and 19 YO began increasing in 2006 it was cause by?

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We have correlation between 18 and 19 YO birth rate and the 20 to 24 YO birth rate, yet if I understand your argument, this correlation is merely coincidental and there are different causes.  But of course the correlation is not perfect because the trend changes appear to begin in the older age group, followed a year or so later by the younger age group.  Which contradicts your claim that the cause is education based, because if this were true then the impact would be seen on the younger group first.

[jimrtex]

This entire discussion is leading up in a long-winded way to direct statistical analysis of the impacts of abstinence-only education.

Abstinence-only programs cannot be seen as invalid based on simplistic extrapoliations of aggregate data alone. For example, during a period of both surge and decline in teen pregnancy (but mostly a decline), 1988-1996, the number of abstinence only-programs increased from 2 percent to over 20 percent. In 2003 it increased to 35 percent. During this time teen pregnancy continued to decline, yet not as quickly. At the same time surveys showed teens had slightly more conservative views on sex.

Cross-state comparisons support the effectiveness of comprehensive approaches. For example, the Dallas News notes that from 1991-2004, the teen pregnancy rate in California declined by 47 percent, while the rate in Texas declined by only 19 percent.:

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The Texas legislation was included as an amendment to SB 1 passed in the 1995 Session.  In the 6 years from 1990 to 1996, the pregnancy rate for 15-17 year olds increased in Texas.  In the next 6 years it decreased by 22% (presumably this would be the age group most affected by any curriculum change).

What is really remarkable about California is the extreme increase in the pregnancy rate across a wide range of ages from teenagers to late 20s, during the late 1980s and early 1990s and the drop since that time.  In other States the rise was much more modest.  If you measure the change in the birth rate from 1991 you are very much using a spike in California.

If you use some other time window, the results are quite interesting.  For example, between 1986 and 1998 the fertility rate for California and Texas both dropped by 2.4/1000 (72.6 to 70.2 in California and 76.1 to 73.7 in Texas).  But in California you had an intervening increase of 12.7/1000 from 1986 to 1990, followed by a 15.1/1000 drop from 1990 to 1998.  In Texas you had a 1.1/1000 increase in the first 4 years followed by a 3.5/1000 drop.

From 1990-2000 the California birth rate for 25-29 YO dropped from 134.5 to 113.5, while in Texas it increased from 122.7 tp 124.8 (-21.0 in California, +2.1 in Texas).  For 20-24 YO in California it decreased from 136.3 to 108.1, while in Texas it decreased from 137.9 to 137.4 (-28.2 in California, -0.5 in Texas).  The drop in teenage rates is largely a continuation of the trend among older women.

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The teen birth rate tracks the birth rate for older women very well.   While there is some relationship between crime and the birth rate, you need to also provide an explanation of cross-state changes.  For example, the increase in the violent crime rate in the late 1980's  was much greater in Texas than in California (California has historically been much more violent than Texas, and only in recent years has it become comparable to Texas), yet there was a much greater spike in births in California.