Teen Pregnancy is Higher in Red States Than in Blue States

[xchrom]

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/teen-pregnancy-higher-red-states-blue-states

Ross Douthat on teen pregnancy rates in blue states and red states:

'If liberal social policies really led inexorably to fewer unplanned pregnancies and thus fewer abortions, you would expect “blue” regions of the country to have lower teen pregnancy rates and fewer abortions per capita than demographically similar “red” regions.

But that isn’t what the data show. Instead, abortion rates are frequently higher in more liberal states, where access is often largely unrestricted, than in more conservative states, which are more likely to have parental consent laws, waiting periods, and so on. “Safe, legal and rare” is a nice slogan, but liberal policies don’t always seem to deliver the “rare” part.

What’s more, another Guttmacher Institute study suggests that liberal states don’t necessarily do better than conservative ones at preventing teenagers from getting pregnant in the first place. Instead, the lower teenage birth rates in many blue states are mostly just a consequence of (again) their higher abortion rates. Liberal California, for instance, has a higher teen pregnancy rate than socially conservative Alabama; the Californian teenage birth rate is only lower because the Californian abortion rate is more than twice as high.'

Are abortion rates lower in states that make it really hard to get an abortion? Of course. I'm not really clear on what, if anything, this is supposed to prove.

As for California and Alabama, that's mostly just a clever bit of cherry picking. The table below is reconstructed from Guttmacher Institute data, and it gives a better sense of the big picture. Douthat is right that there's not a sharp red-blue divide between states with the highest and lowest teen pregancy rates. Still, the top ten is pretty heavily dominated by red states and the bottom ten is pretty heavily dominated by blue states. I think it's probably unwise to pretend that there are simple lessons to be derived from this, but at the same time it's deceptive to pretend that the divide isn't there. There really is a difference, and it's likely that social values play a role in it.

[FreakinDJ]

1. "Praise the Lord - We're Getting Religion Alright"

Oh My Gawd

Oh My Gawd

YES YES YES !!!

Well you get the picture - glad to see so many Fundies in denial

[rock]

5. Rutting for God n/t

[auburngrad82]

2. There can only be one explanation

It's very difficult to hold an aspirin between your knees if you're bow-legged.

[saras]

3. Not new news at all, known for decades. ALL KINDS of well-being go down in red states.

[HopeHoops]

4. Curiously, sex education is more widely accepted in blue states - connection maybe?

[hughee99]

6. Birth control is more widely used among teens in blue states too. n/t

[HopeHoops]

7. Connection maybe?

[hughee99]

8. I'd guess the number of parents allowing their teen daughters to go on the pill

has an affect on teen pregnancy rates.

[HopeHoops]

10. Anyone who thinks teens aren't having sex is clueless.

That said, ours are very open with my wife about their activities and are "behind the curve" on getting active in that arena. That's a good thing!

[former9thward]

9. Another attempt to divide the people into red and blue.

Usually such attempts involve distorting statistics. This is no different. Who knew that states like Nebraska, North Dakota, Iowa and Utah are now considered blue states. Seriously if you want to play this divide game then you would have to look at counties/cites where Democrats predominate and where Republicans predominate.

[DefenseLawyer]

11. Utah leads the nation in online porn subscriptions.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last 2008, Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. I'm not saying there is any connection between porn and teen pregnancy, but it does show yet again that spouting off constantly about being chaste and pure doesn't really translate into actually being chaste and pure.

[RZM]

13. There's a flaw in that Utah stat that's been pointed out before

The data are for online porn subscriptions. Because Utah is Utah, it has a dearth of porn stores and dirty mags on the shelves, etc. Thus many people in Utah have little choice but to go online for porn. Maybe the overall rate of porn consumption is higher in Utah that many there would like to think. But it being first on the list for online is probably at least partly a product of state laws and local community standards.

Contrary to popular belief, not everybody gets their porn online. If they did, those stores wouldn't still be around.

[RZM]

12. Demography can explain most of this

The data is all right there in the study linked to in the article, the full title of which is:

'U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions: National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity'

So let's look at the national numbers and then move to the top five and bottom five states.

The national rate of teen pregnancy is 71 per 1,000. But there are large disparities between races. Nationally, the black and hispanic rates are nearly identical, at 123 and 125 per 1,000, respectively. The national white rate is about one-third of that, at 43 per 1,000. The highest recorded white rate in the nation is in Arkansas, where it's 67. The highest black rate is in New York, at 149 (all of the top five highest black rates are in blue states). The highest Hispanic rates are all in red states in the south, topped off by Alabama at a whopping 228.

So let's look at the top five states for teen pregnancy. They are, in order:

New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, and Mississippi. Three are red states, one blue, one bluish-swing. Interestingly, numbers one and two are the bluish states.

New Mexico is number one, at 93 per 1,000. If we break it down by race, we see that the white and hispanic rates are pretty much normal (44 and 127). The black number is actually quite low, at 79. So why is New Mexico first?

Demography. It's 46 percent hispanic, making it the most hispanic state in the nation. Even though the state's racial teen pregnancy rates are normal, its demography is not characteristic of the rest of the nation and thus its teen pregnancy rate isn't.

Similar situations with the rest of the top five. Nevada has incomplete racial data, while Arizona, Texas, and Mississippi all have large non-white populations. The white teen pregnancy rates in these states are a bit higher than national white rates, but still well below the national teen pregnancy rates and significantly lower than the rates for other races in these same states.

Now for the bottom five. They are, in order:

North Dakota, Minnesota, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

You can see what these states have in common. They are noted for their lack of diversity (four are blue as well). Minnesota actually has one of the highest black rates in the country, but its white rate is low and blacks are only a small share of Minnesota's population.

An interesting comparison is between New Mexico (number 1 in teen pregnancy) and Vermont (number 49). Their white rates are nearly identical, at 44 and 40, respectively. But they are on opposite ends of the list because Vermont is almost all white, while New Mexico is about half white.

I think there is probably some connection between a state's politics and these rates. But looking at the data, the main factor in a state's placement of the list seems to be demography.

[MisterP]

14. and that itself feeds fundamentalism and its particular brand of shame

(which sometimes called "small-town" shaming)--which of course isn't a good atmosphere for sex ed or sexual relationships--leading, to (yes, you guessed it) higher teen pregnancy rates

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

15. Obviously, there is an aspirin shortage in red states.