The first time I posted this, I posted this as just a progress blog. It’s definitely supposed to be the week seven research stats blog, so I deleted that one, and I put this one up. Now it’s correct. I don’t really know a joke about three pregnant teenagers that walk into a bar. I just thought it would be a funny title, since I’m dealing with teen mothers and numbers. If you have heard one like that, then let me know. I would really like to hear it and would very much appreciate it. Oh My GOD! Dr. Homan I am really tired of doing these blogs, and I’m damn sure I’m not the only one. It is starting to become a hassle. This is cruel and unusual punishment. What did we as students do to deserve this type of torture? (This little opinion isn’t going to hurt my grade is it?) OUCH! It hurts so bad. I’m not going to make it. Oh the HORROR! This would be a good time for robots and/or tarantulas to take over the world, like your daughter said. Although I am deathly afraid of spiders, I think I’m starting to hate school and homework much more. Ok now that I’m done whining and be overdramatic, I’m ready to write this blog. I’m so stressed and tired this week. I have to take the 1240 Biology exam and the Theology exam on the same day. Once this week is over I’m getting back on track. No more studying at the last moment. I’m really sorry about that. Ok, now I’m ready. For this blog I’m suppose to have statistics about my problem and/or project. In the blog where I presented my project, I looked up statistics and put them in there. I hope you’re ready, because I’m about to hit you with a lot of numbers. Since we currently reside in Louisiana, I’ll let you know what’s going on here. This website doesn’t provide sexually activity data. Ranked 34 in the nation, the number of teen pregnancies in Louisiana, in 2000, is 15,780. Of those 15,780 teens, African Americans are leading with 9,030. Although it seems Louisiana is doing badly, the teen pregnancy rate is declining, or has declined. From 1992-2000, the rate has dropped 20%. Next I’m going to go to Mississippi #27, since that is where I’m from. I’ll start with sex and contraceptives, since it is the root of the problem. In 2003, the percentage of students who have ever had sex is 61%. This is broken down into gender, grades, and race. I hope you can understand this little graph. It wouldn’t post the way I wanted it to.

Gender: FEMALE 58% MALE 64%
Grade: 9th 48% 10th 57% 11th 70% 12th 75%
Race: White 49% Black 74 % Hispanic N/A
(N/A represents less than 100 respondents for that category; apparently there aren’t many Hispanic people in Mississippi.)

In 2003, the percentage of sexually active students who used a condom at most recent sexual intercourse is a total of 65%. Also in 2003, the percentage of sexually active students that used birth control pills at most recent sexual intercourse is 15%. In 2000, the number of teen pregnancies for girls aged 15-19 was 11,630. That is a lot of Louisiana has much more pregnant teen girls. In Mississippi, African Americans are also leading with pregnant teens with 7,140 of the 11,630. Here is a good statistic. From 1992-2000, the teen pregnancy rate for girls aged 15-19 has declined 16%. Now it is time for some state to state stats. California is the leading state in teen pregnancies in 2000 for girls aged 15-19 was 113,000. Texas is on its tail with 80,050 pregnant teens. Vermont is the state with the least amount of pregnant teens with 970 girls. Well we know what the folks in Vermont are not doing or at least being smart about doing. Let’s jump into a positive note real quick. I haven’t yet mentioned Washington D.C. but they are ranked #1 for their decrease in teen pregnancies with a -54%. On their heels, California was ranked #1 in 2000 with the number of teen pregnancies, but now they are ranked #2 with a 40% decrease in teen pregnancies. Now it’s time for some national statistics. How bad do you think this problem is as a nation? The United States has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and births in the western industrialized world. Teen pregnancy costs the United States at least $7 billion annually. Well, in the year 2000, the United States had a total of 821,810 girls, from ages 15-19 pregnant. Of that 821,810, 346,980 girls were Caucasian, 235,650 were African Americans, 204,980 were Hispanic. That same year, the United States experienced a 24% decrease, which any amount of decrease is great, but I feel it could, hell, should be much better. The largest decline since 1991 by race was for African American women. The birth rate for African American teens aged 15 to 19 fell 42 percent between 1991 to 2002. Although the numbers have decreased, eight hundred-twenty thousand (820,000) teen girls get pregnant each year. Thirty-four percent of young women get pregnant at least one time before they turn 20 years old. Each year the federal government alone spends about $40 billion to help families that began with a teenage birth. That type of money could go to something else, such as education. I feel that education is really suffering right now, and it could really use a lot of improvements. All this information is courtesy of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention. If you would like more information, or you want to look up your home state then you should go to their website. The website is below just click on it. All the opinions are courtesy of yours truly, me. There is no website you can go to for my opinion, so if you want more, um sorry because this is all you get.

www.teenpregnancy.org

This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2005 at 10:08 am and is filed under Project Progress, Week 07: Research Stats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.