January 9, 2009

What's up with the teen birth rate?

Over at Gene Expression, I review the new data on birth rates. Basically, birth rates are up across the board by age and race, and the closer you get to the female fecundity peak in the early 20s, the stronger that signal is. There's nothing special, that is, about births being up among young people. The changes among 15 to 17 year-olds isn't very dramatic, and it's hardly visible compared to the long-term downward trend. The only young group that's shown a pretty steady increase in recent years is 18 to 19 year-old Hispanics, whose birth rates have been increasing since 2000.

Yak over there. Comments closed here.