- Highest teen birthrates are in the South, October 21, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “The highest teenage birthrates in the U.S. are clustered in Southern states and the lowest in the Northeast and upper Midwest, government researchers said Wednesday. Birthrates fell to an average of 41.5 births per 1,000 female teens in 2008 from 42.5 in 2007, with 14 states seeing declines. That followed an increase from 2005 to 2007, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The differences are important because teen parents are less likely to pursue higher education, their children are less likely to be healthy, and they earn less on average than people who have children later…”
- State’s lower teen-pregnancy rate doesn’t tell whole story, By Carol M. Ostrom, October 20, 2010, Seattle Times: “Teen pregnancy is associated with all sorts of bad things – physical risks to babies, interrupted education for moms, and lower lifetime incomes all around – so it’s good news that Washington, overall, has a significantly lower rate than the U.S. average. But the statistics released Wednesday morning by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention don’t tell the whole story. Buried inside the big-picture statistics about Washington are numbers that reveal pockets of teen pregnancy, often in nearby high schools and middle schools…”
- Teen birth rate low, but racial disparities persist, By Elizabeth Dunbar, October 21, 2010, Minnesota Public Radio: “New numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show Minnesota has the eighth-lowest teen birth rate in the nation, but the rates are much higher among teens of color. Nationally, the CDC found that the worst disparities between black teens and the general population occurred in the South and the Upper Midwest. Minnesota was among the 10 states with the highest teen birth rate among black teens…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty