Rising teen birth rate takes toll on California taxpayers

OAKLAND
May 21, 2008 6:20am

Rising teen birth rates are costing California taxpayers $1.7 billion a year, levying an average taxpayer cost per county of more than $29 million, claims a report released Wednesday by the Public Health Institute in Oakland.

Although California's teen birth rate remains lower than the United States' rate, and substantially lower than demographically comparable states such as Texas, the report's authors argue that rates remain unacceptably high in comparison with the rates in other Western democracies.

At 37.8 births per 1,000 teens, California's rate is four times higher than the 9.2 median rate recorded by 16 other Western democracies.

"This discrepancy reinforces that California cannot be complacent with the status quo," says Norman Constantine, PHI senior scientist and clinical professor of public health at UC Berkeley.

The report, which comes out every two years, examines birth rates for the state and by state Senate districts. In the two years since the last study, 32 of the state's 40 Senate districts have experienced an increase in teen birth rate, with changes ranging from a decrease of 2.7 births per 1,000 to the largest increase of 8.9 births per 1,000.

The Central Valley, taking in districts 12, 14, 16, and 18) is one of three regions of the state that saw especially high rates. The other two are the Los Angeles area and the Imperial Valley.

Collectively, teen birth rates in the three areas are incurring nearly a billion dollars in annual taxpayer costs, the report says.

"The costs to local communities continue to increase as the number of teen births rise with the increasing teen population and now the increasing teen birth rate on top of that," says co-author Carmen Nevarez, PHI's medical director and vice president of external relations.

"On a community-by-community basis, we're seeing individual legislative districts costing taxpayers as much as $100 million a year due to avoidable teen pregnancies,” she says.

Costs per district were calculated based on cost analyses on teen pregnancy and parenting. Estimates of taxpayer costs (including lost tax revenue, and public medical and assistance costs) and total societal costs (also including lost income, productivity and private medical costs) were determined based on the total number of teen births in each senate district.

The Public Health Institute describes itself as an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting health, well-being and quality of life. The study was funded in part by a grant from The California Wellness Foundation.