Tuesday, August 6th, 2019
Stephan: This report describes an important trend that is important for a variety of reasons. First, this decline not only in birth rates but in sexual activity amongst the young is not specific to America, but is seen all over the developed world. The fact is that none of the world developed nations has a sustainable birthrate, that is 2.1 births for each death. This means that the great fear of over-population that skewed much of futurist thinking in the 70s through 90s is just wrong. And that decline must also be seen in the context of what climate change is going to do, which is cause the death of millions of people -- no one can actually predict how many.
Second, this data also shows once and for all that all the anti-abortion arguments are crap, I'm not going to be nice about it. If you want to reduce abortion you don't make it illegal, that just moves it underground, you teach kids proper sex education, and you make contraceptives easily available. Study after study has shown that abstinence-only is the creationism of sex education.
Third, this data is telling us that the vast wealth inequality that is the hallmark of an American culture that only values profit is having an unanticipated effect on the formation of families, to the detriment of social wellbeing.
The teen birth rate in the United States is at a record low, dropping below 18 births per 1,000 girls and women ages 15 to 19 for the first time since the government began regularly collecting data on this group, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released data from the National Center for Health Statistics. (Emphasis added)
In 2018, the birth rate among 15- to 19-year-old girls and women was less than half of what it had been in 2008 (41.5 births per 1,000). Asians and Pacific Islanders led the way over this time, followed by Hispanics, with teen birth rate declines of 74% and 65%, respectively. Rates for white and black teens fell by more than 50% over the past decade as well.
Despite rapid declines in teen birth rates across all major racial and ethnic groups, disparities persist. In 2018, the birth rate for Hispanic and black teens ages 15 to 19 was almost double the rate among white teens and more than five times as high as the rate among Asians and Pacific Islanders.
Teen birth rates peaked at […]
Maybe the teenage crowd is getting smarter and know how hard it is to live now ie: finding a job to support a child, buying a house or car, not to mention the SHOOTINGS all over the place. I would never bring a child into this world under the current conditions if I was a young person. I thought the earth was too crowded and that there was too much inequality back in 1960’s and things were actually much better then comparatively speaking.