Teen Birth Rates Drop

Studies have shown that the teen birth rate in the United States has been dropping significantly. The Colorado teen birth rate and the abortion rate have both dropped 48 percent over the last five years. At the start of the study, half of the women in the the poorest parts of the state gave birth before the age of 21; however, five years later, half the women in the same group were over the age of 24 when first giving birth. European women have known for  years that IUDs* and implants -- birth control devices that, once inserted, are 99 percent effective for three to 10 years -- are the most reliable way to prevent unintended pregnancies. [1]

In 2013, Jennifer B. Kane and a team of researchers reviewed 40 years of studies on the impact of teen parenting and found that a woman who has a child before age 18 is likely to have from eight months to two years less education than a woman who waits until she's older. Women with household incomes greater than $75,000 per year were almost eleven times more likely to use LARCS* than those whose household incomes  were less than $10,000. In the United States, those between the ages of 15 and 24 account for half of all STIs* acquired each year, despite making up just a quarter of the sexually active population. The chlamydia rate for young black women is five times that of their white counterparts, while young black men contact the disease at nearly ten times the rate of young white men. [2]

There is yet another study done in 2010 by Christine Dehlerdorf, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, that found  providers were more likely to recommend the IUD to low-income black and Latino patients than to low-income white people with comparable health histories.

*IUDs - flexible plastic devices that are inserted into the uterus to prevent pregnancy.
*LARCs - Long Lasting Reversible Contraceptives.
*STIs - sexually transmitted diseases.

ADDENDUMS:
*According to the latest information, 750,000 teenage girls get pregnant every year and four in ten of  sexually active teens get a sexually transmitted infection.

*Glass-Steagall is needed because too-big-to-fail banks are bigger, riskier and more ungovernable today than they were in the financial meltdown reaching its apogee in late 2008. Repeal of Glass-Steagall hasn't led to more efficiency and lower costs; however, repeal  has helped bring about high-risk gambling and the aggressive hustling of dubious investments to unwary clients. Traditional banking is incompatible with the risk-seeking, "short-term mentality" of investment bankers who seek "immediate rewards." There is a fraud mentality in investment banking -- a documented illegality. Big banks are a threat to democracy.

Footnotes
1. Davi McClain, "The Birth Control Revolution," The Nation, November 16, 2015.

[2] Ibid.