English and Welsh teenage pregnancies – perception versus reality | Hacker News Reader

English and Welsh teenage pregnancies – perception versus reality

visual.ons.gov.uk

21 pointsDanBC20 comments

I like how they made it impossible to actually give the correct answer.

But seriously, if you really want to over-engineer the simple problem of entering a number why not at least use a somewhat logarithmic scale to make it possible to actually insert the correct value?

And why is the question about girls under 16 (i.e. up to 15 years old), when the title of the article is about teenage pregnancy (up to nineteen years old)? It seems designed to confuse.

I think that's because the statistics are typically reported in age-group cohorts, so people 'in the know' tend to think of it as pregnancies from age 13-15, pregnancies from age 15-17, pregnancies from age 17-19.

At least, that'd be my guess because when I was doing research on teenage crime rates, the government statistics that I found initially were all expressed as such and I didn't have access to the raw data.

Usability issues aside, this is an incredible result. A lot of poverty and social issues come from having children before the parents can reasonably support or take care of them. This leads to neglect or resentment of the children, which affects everyone. By having young people thinking about avoiding pregnancy, that sets them up for good family planning practices.

Watching the map go from purple to white, I was speechless. I'd be interested if someone was able to talk about the potential reasons.

I'd be cautious to credit the government with this change. In talking to my own daughter, I think the exposure of what happens as a result of teenage pregnancy (16 and pregnant, anyone?) and the lack of a stigma against talking about it with your peers is possibly one of the biggest contributors. When I was 16/17 and having sex, and I talked to my peers about IUDs or the depo injections, it wasn't cool.

I am not up on current stats and have never been that familiar with European trends, but, in the US, girls in some poor neighborhoods actually see their quality of life go up by having a baby in their teens because their family of origin is so poor that having a baby qualifies them for welfare benefits, allowing them to move out etc. They are still poor, and now they are trapped in long term poverty, but there are short term benefits.

I have seen study results indicating that one contributor to high pregnancy rates is shame concerning sex. For some populations, this results in less use of birth control because use of birth control involves planning to have sex and if you plan it, you "must be a slut." Whereas if you are emotionally swept away and "it just happens" that is okay because it is "love."

So one thing that helps is generally healthier attitudes towards sex in the general population and easier access to birth control. A big difference between teens who get pregnant and teens who don't is use of birth control. The teens who wind up pregnant aren't necessarily any more sexually active. In some cases, the two groups see comparable levels of sexual activity, but one group uses birth control and one does not.

Well said.

Schools are a very a good place to learn about this stuff too :)

I'd really love to see a graph of smartphone sales vs. teenage pregnancies.

It needs to be teen smartphone ownership versus teen pregnancy in my opinion. However this may be hard to get as many phones would be hand-me-downs or purchased for them.

...why?

Because smartphone sales started to rise rapidly around 2007/2008, just when that curve with teenage pregnancies starts to dive?

Right, but why would that be a connection and not just correlation?

Better access to information, like how contraceptives work, where you can get them, myths and facts about sex, etc. I don't know if there is actually a connection but it seems worth investigating.

I ask this in complete earnestness, because your remark is what caused me to read the article, but how is this related to the data in the article? Why are you asking this? Because I would love to know if I have missed some relevant detail that might be meaningful.

Thanks.

https://xkcd.com/925/

Teen pregnancies cause cell phones, duh! ;-)

Damnit. I am old and slow.

The article claims that 'more young women in higher education' as a factor in falling teenage pregnancies. However, I can't see how being in higher education (which starts at 18) can affect teen pregnancies (which the article defines as 'under 18 pregnancies').

0.5% and 2% are still really high!

I don't think so. In each case it should be less than 5% of those who are sexually active. Considering that kids are stupid and make mistakes, there's going to be some irreducible number.

England is still higher than the rest of Europe, I think.

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