Arkansas ranked highest in the nation in teenage birthrates in 2011 despite posting a substantial decline since 2007, according to a report released Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics.
The state saw teens ages 15-19 give birth at a rate of 51 per 1,000 females of their age group in 2011, compared with a rate of 60 per 1,000 just four years earlier.
“I’m a little surprised at us having the highest ranking,” said Bradley Planey of the Arkansas Department of Health. “The last time I saw a national ranking, we had the third-highest.”
He called the decline in relation to the top, worst spot on the list a “good newsbad news situation.”
Arkansas’ decline paled against a backdrop of a sharp downturn in the nation as a whole, according to the annual report.
“Teen birth rates fell steeply in the United States from 2007 to 2011, resuming a decline that began in 1991 but was briefly interruptedin 2006 and 2007,” the report said.
In the 50 states and the District of Columbia combined, the 2011 rate was 31.3 births per 1,000 in the group, a record low and a 25 percent drop from 41.5 in 2007.
The National Center for Health Statistics is an arm of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is the nation’s public health institute and part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In 2007, the center ranked Arkansas third in teen births, with a rate of 60.1.
The next year, the state suffered a small setback, worsening its rate to 61.8, but improving its ranking to only the fourth-highest. In 2009, Arkansas improved its rate and its ranking, falling to 59.3 and to No. 5, respectively.
By 2010, Arkansas’ significant improvement to a 52.5 rate was not enough compared with other states that were, on the whole, reducing teen births more rapidly. It once again found itself at the spot third from the top, before attaining the dubiousNo. 1 ranking in 2011 with the 51 rate.
Before rounding, the 2011 rate was actually 50.7, which Planey noted is not that far off from No. 2 Mississippi’s 50.2 rate.
“That’s really pretty close,” he said. “But when it comes to rankings, that’s what grabs the headlines.”
Arkansas’ decline in teen births between the 2007 and 2011 reports was 16 percent. But Mississippi declined 28 percent, and two others in the 2011 Top 5, New Mexico and Texas, each managed to reduce their rates by 24 percent. Oklahoma, fourth-highest, also beat Arkansas’ decline with an 18 percent drop.
And that was just improvement among the states that had the most teen mothers. Other states had declines of as much as 39 percent.
When Planey calculated the current Arkansas rate against the nation as a whole: “We’re 65 percent higher. That’s not good news.”
As the Health Department’s associate branch chief for Family Health, Planey regularly gives presentations about the harmful effects of teen pregnancy, not only on the young mother, but on her offspring. Last year, he brought in the national director of the National Campaign for Teen Pregnancy Prevention to film an hour-long special for AETN.
“People say I’m the bearer of bad news,” he said. But he gives the teenagers themselves credit for the improvement Arkansas has seen.
Planey rattles off a list of downsides to teen mothers.
“Children of teen mothers are more likely to be born prematurely and die in infancy,” he said, compared with babies born to mothers age 20 or older. “They’re more likely to have low school achievement. They’re more likely to drop out of high school.”
The offspring of the young moms are more likely to have health problems, he said.
“They’re more likely to be incarcerated,” Planey said. “Or to give birth as teens. The last one is: They face higher unemployment as young adults.”
Planey and a spokesman for the National Center for Health Statistics, Brian Tsai, said that while various age demographics are tracked for teen birthrates and teenpregnancy rates, the 15-19 birthrate group is the most reliable data set when comparing information by state.
That kind of data has been tracked at least since the 1960s, Planey said, and to some extent going back to World War II, when people married and had children at much younger ages than today.
The convention in demographic analysis is to look at the population patterns in five-year age groups, such as 15-19 and 20-24, Tsai said in an e-mail. “There are consistent and reliable series of population estimates available for these age groups, thus making it possible to compute population-based rates,” such as birthrates and death rates.
“For teenagers, we have for many years broken down the 15-19 group into 15-17 and 18-19, because the risks for poor birth outcome are substantially higher for younger than for older teens,” Tsai wrote. “However, when examining patterns by state and for smaller geographic groups, it’s also important to be sure that the numbers are adequate for analysis.”
Planey said Arkansas conducts surveys and has severalgrants currently in place that allow it to tackle the problem of teen pregnancy, although the federal budget sequestration has cut two grants by 5 percent.
One of them is a federal grant of roughly $590,000 for abstinence-only education, and the other a $480,000 grant for a comprehensive program that covers contraception and abstinence along with financial literacy, education and career success and healthy-life skills. The latter, called the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP, targets high-risk children in Pulaski, Garland, Jefferson, Lonoke and Saline counties.
The abstinence-only program is offered in Arkansas, Benton, Carroll, Chicot, Conway, Crawford, Faulkner, Johnson, Prairie, Pulaski, Saline and Washington counties.
“The things that are important are for parents to talk with their kids about sex education, as well as what they’re going through,” Planey said.
“That kind of communication has proved to be the most influential in a teen’s life - even if they pretend they’re not listening.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 05/24/2013