October 30, 2006
BABIES GROW UP TO BE TAXPAYERS:
Fewer teens are giving birth, but cost to taxpayers still steep (Wendy Koch, 10/29/2006, USA TODAY)
[Sarah Brown] welcomes a one-third decline from 62 births per 1,000 teen girls in 1991 to 41 births in 2004. [...]The abortion rate dropped even more, from 37 abortions per 1,000 teen girls in 1991 to 22 in 2002, the last year for which figures are available, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organization that studies sexual and reproductive health policy. [...]
The report says the 2004 costs of teen childbearing include $1.9 billion for health care, $2.3 billion for child welfare, $2.1 billion for incarceration and $2.9 billion in lower tax revenue. That federal, state and local tab is offset slightly by family support for younger teens. The cost to government averages $1,430 per child per year.
The price tag varies by state, depending on the number of births and benefit levels, from $12 million in Vermont to $1 billion in Texas.
Teen birth rates generally have fallen since 1957 but rose in the late 1980s. The subsequent drop saved taxpayers an estimated $6.7 billion nationally in 2004, the report says. The savings ranged from more than $1 billion in California to $5 million in Wyoming.
While reducing out of wedlock births (which many births to teens are) and abortions are excellent social goals, these numbers require that the additional citizens be considered only as liabilities, never as assets. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 30, 2006 12:00 AM
Few of those born out of wedlock become assets, unless necessitating jail and prison construction, operation, and maintenance is defined as ‘an asset’.
The dollar cost is insignificant compared to the social and individual emotional cost of irresponsible child training and supervision. Out of wedlock birth is just one more disastrous consequence of destructive compassion.
Sixty years ago, there were few such births in the white community because of the associated stigma. The rate changed as such behavior became less stigmatized.
The rate of out of wedlock births in the black community was and is much higher because the dominant white community had the attitude, “Well what can you expect of them”?
That's just silly.
Posted by: oj at October 30, 2006 11:04 AMTGN, the morals of the black community were even stricter than the white in the days before the civil rights act. Kids were taught right and wrong even if it was only for self-preservation.
Now that we have equality, kids of all hues are equally unruly and when the strict moral code in place prior to the anything goes 60's was turned on its head, boys and girls let their hormones rule instead of their parents.
Finish off the black family by encouraging welfare pimps to replace fathers and mothers and we got exactly what we sowed.