www.csua.org/u/p2y -> news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090916/sc_livescience/teenbirthrateshigherinhighlyreligiousstates
com - Wed Sep 16, 7:08 pm ET US states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.
Mississippi topped the list for conservative religious beliefs and teen birth rates, according to the study results, which will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Reproductive Health.
types of religious beliefs that are perhaps more liberal, researchers say. And while the study reveals information about states as a whole, it doesn't shed light on whether an individual teen who is more religious will also be more likely to have a child.
rate," said Amy Adamczyk, a sociologist at the City University of New York, who was not involved in the current study. "Are there just a couple of really precocious religious teenagers who are running around and getting pregnant and having all of these babies, but that's not the norm?" Strayhorn agrees and says the study aimed to look at communities (or states) as a whole. "It is possible that an anti-contraception attitude could be caused by religious cultures and that could exert its effect mainly on the non-religious individuals in the culture," Strayhorn told LiveScience. Bible states Strayhorn compiled data from various data sets. The religiosity information came from a sample of nearly 36,000 participants who were part of the US Religious Landscapes Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted in 2007, while the teen birth and abortion statistics came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For religiosity, the researchers averaged the percentage of respondents who agreed with conservative responses to eight statements, including: ''There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion," and ''Scripture should be taken literally, word for word."
teen birth rate even when they accounted for income and abortion rates. For instance, the results showed more abortions among teenagers in the less religious states, which would skew the findings since fewer teens in these states would have births. But even after accounting for the abortions, the study team still found a state's level of religiosity could predict their teen birth rate. The higher the religiosity, the higher was the teen birth rate on average. John Santelli of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University calls the study "well-done," adding that the results are not surprising. "The index of religiosity is tapping into more fundamentalist religious belief," Santelli said. "I'm sure there are parts of New England that have very low teen birth rates, which have pretty high religious participation, but they're probably less conservative, less fundamentalist type of congregations." Other factors that may have been important to consider include ethnic backgrounds of state residents, according to Adamczyk, the City University of New York sociologist. "We know that African American women on average tend to underreport their abortions, which means they could also underreport the likelihood that they got pregnant," Adamczyk said. "If you're dealing with states with a high number of African American wome, you might run into that problem." Adamczyk's own, separate research has shown a nearly opposite correlation, at the individual level. "What we find is that more religious women are less likely to engage in riskier sex behaviors, and as a result they are less likely to have a premarital pregnancy," Adamczyk said during a telephone interview.
ditch their religious views and have an abortion, she has found. Adamczyk says the idea that anti-contraception principles could be behind the link is controversial, as studies on the topic have varied results. And so it increases their chances of a pregnancy," Adamczyk said. Earlier marriage among religious individuals could also partly explain the finding. "In the south, there is a higher rate of marriage of teenagers. And one possible explanation is just that in the southern states, which are also more religious, people just get married earlier and have planned pregnancies and those have perfectly good outcomes," Strayhorn said. He added that he doesn't think the earlier marriage idea explains the religion-birth link.
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