Teen age sex!
Dec. 28th, 2003 03:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
libertangoMatthew Yglesias has a post where he reports Bill O'Reilly went off the handle regarding teen pregnancy in his radio broadcast. Bill wants to blame "all the sex on TV and in the movies" for rising teen pregnancy.
Yglesias tears into Bill for being silly. Me, I think Bill is just plain ignorant -- US teen pregnancy has been dropping for about three-and-a-half decades. Here's what I commented:
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Actually, I've been through the Census Bureau data on this issue before, and it turns out US teen-age pregnancy rates move in absolute lock-step with the pregnancy rate for the whole population.
The most recent data the Census Bureau has is up to 2000 -- at least in the Statistical Abstract. Adding in the newest data since the last time I looked at this, the teen pregnancy rate per 1000 is the lowest it's been since 1939 -- 48.5. There was the "baby echo" peak in 1991 (at 62.1 teen births per 1000), but it's been all downhill since then, to the tune of a 22% cut in the rate since 1991.
The peak year for the teen birth rate, since 1935? That shocking, wanton, libertine year of 1957 during the Eisenhower Administration. Which, unsurprisingly, is also when the Baby Boom peaked. The rate was 96.3 per 1000, or just about double the rate of teenage births today.
This is why, in recent years, those conservatives quixotic enough to take up this issue have tended to emphasize the unmarried rate, if they're at all smart.
O'Reilly ain't smart.
Yglesias tears into Bill for being silly. Me, I think Bill is just plain ignorant -- US teen pregnancy has been dropping for about three-and-a-half decades. Here's what I commented:
*^*^*
Actually, I've been through the Census Bureau data on this issue before, and it turns out US teen-age pregnancy rates move in absolute lock-step with the pregnancy rate for the whole population.
The most recent data the Census Bureau has is up to 2000 -- at least in the Statistical Abstract. Adding in the newest data since the last time I looked at this, the teen pregnancy rate per 1000 is the lowest it's been since 1939 -- 48.5. There was the "baby echo" peak in 1991 (at 62.1 teen births per 1000), but it's been all downhill since then, to the tune of a 22% cut in the rate since 1991.
The peak year for the teen birth rate, since 1935? That shocking, wanton, libertine year of 1957 during the Eisenhower Administration. Which, unsurprisingly, is also when the Baby Boom peaked. The rate was 96.3 per 1000, or just about double the rate of teenage births today.
This is why, in recent years, those conservatives quixotic enough to take up this issue have tended to emphasize the unmarried rate, if they're at all smart.
O'Reilly ain't smart.
