Posted on 05/21/2008 4:17:06 AM PDT by Reeses
The teenage birthrate in California increased in 2006 for the first time in 15 years and costs taxpayers $1.7 billion a year - or $2,493 per baby, according to a report released Wednesday by the Oakland-based Public Health Institute.
... The financial losses cover a range of things, said the study's authors, from public assistance to foster care to diminished future taxable wages and spending power among the parents.
"The costs are really starting to climb now. That's not money we can afford to lose," said Dr. Norman Constantine, a clinical professor of public health at UC Berkeley and lead author of the Public Health Institute study.
The actual number of births to teens started increasing in 2004, due to a growing population of teens in the state, and the annual costs to taxpayers has climbed at the same time - the state hit a low of about $1.45 billion a year in 2002, and then saw a sharp climb in costs through 2006.
There were 52,770 babies born to teen moms in California in 2006, the most recent year available, for a rate of 37.8 births per 1,000 teens. That was a small increase over the previous year's rate of 37.2 births per 1,000, but it was remarkable for ending a streak of declining rates that the state's public health officials had pointed to with great pride.
...
The costs to individual families can be devastating. Girls who give birth as teenagers are usually less educated than their peers, make less money, are more likely to be single moms, and run a higher risk of having a baby with health problems, public health officials say.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
They gotta repopulate the state some way...
All those anchor babies are expensive. This is just the start..headstart..school busing..child care..bilingual ed..special ed..counseling...jouvenile court...parole officer...uninsured motorist..prison. It all costs money and there is no end in site to the cost to the taxpayer.
You are exactly correct. In the context of declining birthrates in the Western world, higher teen pregnancy is a very good thing.
It is the height of liberal elitism to criticize women getting married at 18 year old and having children.
Here’s the little ditty they almost forgot to mention.
The teen birthrate among Latinas is almost twice the national average, according to the Public Health Institute.
Who say they’re getting married?
If the teen moms were getting married, with their husbands supporting them and the children, that would be fine. Unfortunately, the main point of the article is that so many of the teen moms are NOT married,and their babies are costing the taxpayers millions of dollars every year.
Is CA going to form a $10 million committee to study the problem? And in ten years, will they form $20 million committee to plan the implementation of the first committee’s recommendations?
This "teen" issue is used so liberals can discuss the blight of illegitimacy without mentioning marriage.
With higher gas prices, the whole country is about to see a big leap in birthrates. Less driving, more parking!
Chew on this thought:
Married people aren't having enough babies for America to survive. Do we have to accept the burden of illegitimacy to guarantee enough children?
I know what we should do!
Let’s support the children of these “teen mothers” with our tax dollars,
that will make less of them choose the behavior leading to being teen mothers... right? Am I “thinking lib” yet?
I’m tellin’ ya - I have two. Want to have more. Would have a LOT more if half my income weren’t going to support the illegitimate children of other people.
But, this IS part of the left’s goal. Reduction in the occurrence of the traditional family, increase in the occurrences of societally damaging “families” -
the ultimate goal being the destruction of traditional society.
I'm finding that number a little hard to swallow. It costs far more than $2493 out of pocket from Medicaid just to deliver a baby, including the prenatal and postnatal care to the young mom. Caesarian deliveries go much higher. And then we have the ADC, the welfare, the Head Start, Medicaid- and community-funded health care for the child, formal schooling at $8000 per year per child. All those costs are just what we have if we're lucky and the kid doesn't end up in the justice system. No, the cost of one of these children is very far above 2400 and change. They are a constant drain on the economy, and you cannot persuade me that their single mothers are chipping in enough through taxes to cover the expenses.
Funny, the rest of us managed to keep our legs together until we had husbands.
No one is saying that they all need to go to graduate school or remain childless. The thought is just that maybe they'd better nail down husbands before they start generating children the rest of us are going to have to support.
Sure, nature impels us to do all sorts of things. That doesn't mean we necessarily have to give in. For millennia, a small minority of girls have succumbed to nature's impulses and have gotten pregnant, but the vast majority managed to control themselves until they had a husband to help support their children. If we live in a civilized society we learn to defer gratification. Our society has absolutely fallen apart.
Hopefully, unlike Texas, the state won't be raiding all the homes and towns where this might be occurring.
Can I be honest? If 25 million packed up tonight and left California by morning to where ever, I’d applaud and throw a party.
Nature compels me to sh*t my pants too...but you learn when young it's not the thing to do in a civilized society....
Can you hold it for 10 years? Parents not wanting their daughters to get pregnant has been a strong desire for at least 100,000 years. That is why human females are the only female animal to have hidden heat. Nature is hiding it from the parents. Nature has come to rely heavily on “accidents” to make humans. More than half the people in this world are oopsies. My point is that nature is supposed to trick girls into getting pregnant. That’s the way it works. If nature wins one round it is really poor sport to murder the baby.
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