Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Red State, Blue State, Teen Birthrate, Teen Abortion rate   posted by Razib @ 1/27/2010 07:58:00 PM
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A reader pointed to this post in Free Exchange:
Here are the 15 states with the biggest percentage drop from 1988-2005 in the ratio of teen abortions—the percentage of teen pregnancies that ended in abortion, not counting miscarriages. Crudely put, these are the states where pregnant white teens stopped having abortions between 1988-2005.

1. Kentucky
2. Nebraska
3. Arkansas
4. Oklahoma
5. South Dakota
6. Tennessee
7. Kansas
8. Iowa
9. Texas
10. North Dakota
11. Alabama
12. Indiana
13. Missouri
14. North Carolina
15. Utah


I have 2008 exit poll data handy by state, as well as the 2005 birth and abortion data. Abortion ratio = (Abortion rate)/(Abortion rate + Birthrate); basically pregnancy rate minus miscarriages. "Teen" here defines females in the age range 15-19. As you'd expect:

1) Whites voting Democrat is correlated with lower white birthrates
2) Whites voting Democrat is correlated with higher white abortion rates
3) Whites voting Democrat is correlated with higher white abortion ratios

#3 is stronger than #2, and I believe that's because teen pregnancy rates are lower in areas where whites are strongly Democrat, so the abortion rates are also going to be lower. The abortion ratio is somewhat normalized to pregnancy rate.




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