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CNN reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new information stating that the teen birth rate “declined 2 percent between 2007 and 2008.” According to Stephanie Ventura, the chief of the reproductive statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, that might mean that the increase between 2005 and 2007 was a “blip.”
What? How does that make sense? Ventura explains:
The long-term trend in the teen birth rate has been downward since 1991, Ventura said. But the declines themselves grew more modest in the mid-2000s before turning upward in 2006.
“We could be reaching a place where further decreases are harder to achieve,” she said.
According to the CDC, there were “41.5 births per 1,000 teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 in 2008.” That’s down from 42.5 per 1,000 in 2007, and 41.9 per 1,000 in 2006.
But there were 2 percent fewer births overall in the United States in ‘08, and a 4 percent decline among teens ages 18 and 19. Ventura says the economy might be a factor.
Maybe for the kiddos, but births among 40+ women were found to be on the rise:
The report also showed that women giving birth between ages 40 and 44 increased to the highest rate since 1967: 9.9 births per 1,000 women, up 4 percent since 2007. For women aged 45 to 49, birth rates also went up, from 0.6 births per 1,000 to 0.7 in 2008.
What do YOU think of these new numbers, lilies? Is Ventura jumping to conclusions?
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I don’t know much of anything about statistics, but I suppose what Ventura was saying could make sense. At a certain point, you really can’t decrease teen pregnancy any more without huge shifts in society’s perception of teen pregnancy. Since she wasn’t saying that it meant we could stop working to prevent teen pregnancy, I could (potentially) agree with what she’s saying.
She said it could be. It could be. What’s wrong with identifying the fact? To me, it shows that she has a basic understanding of statistics. Yay! That’s pretty rare these days.
Who knows? Who cares? If they’re still working towards the same ends, then addressing possibilities isn’t going to hurt anything.
I don’t think we can really know if it was just a “blip” for a few years to see if it continues to happen or not.
[...] Increase In Teen Birth Rate A ‘Blip’? – Zelda Lily [...]
Maybe it’s just the area I live in, but I don’t think the increase in teen pregnancy is just a blip. I’m 18 and I can’t count how many girls I know who are my age (and younger) on my fingers and toes because there are so many. I’m going to wait for the 2009 numbers.
*Girls my age who have children. Should have specified that, haha!