Posted on 10/24/2008 10:38:38 AM PDT by meandog
NEW YORK — Teen motherhood has gained a bit of celebrity allure with the pregnancies of Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin, but front-line professionals see a starkly different reality involving poverty, lost opportunities and a cost to taxpayers in the billions of dollars annually.
At minimum, the public cost of births to teens 17 and younger is $7.6 billion a year, according to research presented Thursday at a national forum in Chicago. The calculation includes both the lower taxes that these often impoverished families contribute and the extra social services they require.
"Teen births do have substantial, widespread negative effects, especially for the children of teen mothers," said University of Delaware economist Saul Hoffman, who compiled the estimate and described it as very conservative.
"The children are more likely to be in foster care, less likely to graduate from high school," he said. "The daughters are more likely to have teen births themselves, the sons are more likely to be incarcerated."
There are more than 400,000 teen births annually in the United States, most of them to unmarried mothers on welfare, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
Yet over the past year, teen pregnancies have been in the spotlight in contexts detached from the sobering statistics.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I thought I just read on another thread that the abortion rate goes up when the economy is in trouble. Wouldn’t that make the birth rate of teen mothers go down? Just asking. I’m afraid of what Obama’s fix for this might be....free or even forced abortions for anyone under 18?
I like how the article goes on and on about this without every once bringing up the word “adoption.”
Thanks for Fair and Balanced Fox news. [not]
There’s an ELEPHANT in the room and her name is Sarah Palin.
It is amazing how Adoption is not promoted...It is heartbreaking to hear about teem mother’s who drown there newborns in toilets, thrown them in plastic bags into a dumpster or leave them just to die alone...
Active sexual teens need to be on birth control or let them give there children to a family that will love there baby and care for it.
Look up “Freedom of Choice Act” on Lifenews.com.
It’s EVIL.
All restrictions removed, no allowance for hospitals or doctors’ consciences (forced to do abortions), fully taxpayer funded abortions, and defunding of abortion alternative orgs.
Probably the 2nd thing that 0bama will sign into law.
Do you mean paying unwed teen mothers with housing, foodstamps, and cash isn’t reducing the number of unwed teen mothers?
Is someone preventing them from doing this?
YES: Ignorance, Stupidity, Lack of good or involved parenting....
Bristol Palin has contributed? When people knew she was pregnant before marriage what - one month at the most? And she and the father of her baby are going to get married?
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