I suspect you are correct. But from a practical point of view of getting out of poverty, I don’t think it really matters. There is a poverty cycle, where being poor increases the likelihood of teen pregnancy, which in turn greatly increases the likelihood of ending up poor. To get out of poverty, one has to break the cycle.
A teenage girl can’t do much about being born poor. What she has some control over is having risky sex. Not saying it is easy or fair. Just saying it is within her power to at least attempt to get out of the poverty cycle.
It would help if there was a change in culture where such behavior is not so easily condoned. Don’t want to return to the days when pregnant teens were stigmatized and ostracized. But teen pregnancy shouldn’t be so easily accepted that it is painless for boys to walk away and for girls to use it as a distraction from boredom/hopelessness/depression. On second thought, it may not be a bad thing for boys to be stigmatized if they abandon a pregnant girl.
In any case, I don’t see a problem in making it clear that such behavior, regardless of the mitigating factors like poverty, is still irresponsible and self-destructive.
Few things (besides universal love and brotherhood) would help the world more than:
figuring out how to give young men (ahem) a safe, cheap, effective, and reliably reversible vasectomy that could be recommended and done at age 16 or so;
actually vigorously pursuing cures, vaccines, and rapid test kits for venereal diseases, and making a major public health effort at eradication,
Unplanned pregnancies are still treated as a misfortune of the immoral rather than as the perhaps single biggest factor in blocking economic advancement of young people. And the children of those young people with unplanned pregnancies are far far more likely to do the same.
david fb
(no authority to quote, but i have taken on and godfathered and mentored a hell of a lot of bright poor kids “in trouble”)
You are assuming a 15 year old makes rational decisions, especially if they live in a lower socioeconomic atmosphere where others are not making rational decisions either.
A friend of mind is a substitute teacher in a nearby town full of what we call “country cousins”. All white. The girls compete to see who can get pregnant first so they can drop out and get married. I didn’t believe him at first until I talked with a social counselor from another nearby area. Same story. Amazing.
It’s worth noting that birth control for non-insured girls costs 1) a doctor appointment, and $50/mo for the pill, or over $1000 for an IUD. That is a significant cost in a household where the parent(s) are living hand to mouth. Of course you can argue that it’s even more expensive not to get it, but that’s not how people think.
The girls don’t think like that. Their thinking is marriage and/or welfare (baby’s daddy has no money and no expectation of a job in the foreseeable future). So, additional income no matter what happens (healthcare, etc paid by the state and/or federal govt).
ah but if we break out poor whites v poor blacks would there be any difference?
When 60% of blacks are firmly in the middle class why say blacks at all instead of “poorer teens”?
This information is dated but good enough…google result
But when you look at actual rates, they demonstrate a stark reality: Girls of color are much more likely to become pregnant. Among non-Hispanic white teens, the birth rate in 2013 was 19 births per 1,000, while among black teens, it was 39 births per 1,000.Mar 3, 2015
In other words out of 1000 female teens 981 white teens and 961 black teens do not get pregnant.
So why did you ask…
There are far more whites than blacks in poverty by a factor of almost twice as many whites in poverty.
This means when African Americans have 39 pregnancies per 1000 that is self control among those who are impoverish. While whites have 19 yet have a far lower poverty rate? It means less self control as you put it among poor whites. You do the math.
The real reason African Americans have a higher poverty rate is discrimination blocking people from access.
Further why are you living by old stats and old stereo types. Teen pregnancy has been steadily falling. Dramatically so actually.
Really this last part is why I see the Millennials and Zs as such great generations. Far more responsible nothing like the baby boomers. Any generation that wants to bank on XOM, Big Tobacco and fire arms is hardly made up of responsible adults. Getting rich off garbage is not being responsible.
#### African American Poverty Rate: 19.5% (8.5 million people)
#### Hispanic Poverty Rate: 17.0% (10.4 million people)
#### White Poverty Rate: 8.2% (15.9 million people)
The black teen pregnancy rate is roughly twice that of whites, and the poverty rate of blacks is roughly twice that of whites. So, it would appear that the teen pregnancy rate of poor blacks and whites is about the same.
The reason for the drop? Investment in self by self and community or society at large. White and blacks attend college at high rates led by females going to college. Why get pregnant if you have a bright future?
Google result
What percentage of college students are race?
The college enrollment rate in 2021 was higher for 18- to 24-year-olds who were Asian (60 percent) than for those who were White (38 percent), Black (37 percent), of Two or more races (35 percent), Hispanic (33 percent), and American Indian/Alaska Native (28 percent).
I would suggest the drop is due to ready availability of safe and effective birth control, not that fewer teens are fooling around.
Interesting map of state by state teen birth rate in that same article. I would observe that the states with the highest birth rate are the “traditional family values” states that try to prevent people obtaining birth control, as availability “would encourage them to have sex”, while those with lower birth rates are the “wokies” that make birth control more available.
Just want to clarify that this is not an argument against my POV.
The premise is that teen pregnancy is the major contributor to generational poverty (cases where the same family suffers from poverty over multiple generations). The children of teen mothers tend to be poor and end up making the same mistakes as their parent. If that is the case, then groups with higher rates of teen pregnancy will also exhibit higher rates of generational poverty.
The argument is NOT that poor black women are more likely to get pregnant at an early age than poor white women. The argument is that black women are observed to have a higher rate of teen pregnancy than white women, which results in a higher rate of generational poverty in the black community than the white community.
Note though that this doesn’t mean I favor race-specific programs to deal with this issue. I’ve said before that I am not a big fan of identity politics. But I do think one can structure race-neutral initiatives that will benefit all but potentially have a greater positive impact on the black community. An example is the New York City effort to reduce teen pregnancy.
