In a deliberate echo of my blog pal Elizabeth I came across a story today about this fine Southern American state, but mine has a religious twist. According to data collected from Pew and the Centre for Disease Control, Mississippi has the doubly dubious honour of being the most religious state in the Union and the one with the highest number of teenage births.
The key question is, is there a correlation? Sociologist Amy Adamczyk makes a case for it as follows,
Adamczyk says the idea that anti-contraception principles could be behind the link is controversial, as studies on the topic have varied results. "The idea is that in the heat of the moment, a young woman who has said, 'I'm going to be a virgin on my wedding night,' is with her boyfriend and she says 'Let's just do it.' And since they didn't plan it, nobody has a condom. And so it increases their chances of a pregnancy," Adamczyk said.
I can certainly see her point and the numbers do seem to support this view, for example the states with the least teen births (New Hampshire & Vermont) are also the least religious.
So, is sex more popular than Jesus?
5 comments:
Oh no, you beat me! I have that post scheduled to go up later. I'll just pretend NO ONE ELSE beat me to the punch.
Don't know what it is about my state -- last in education but first in pregnancies. Most obese state in the union, lowest literacy rate, etc.
But we stil love it, in the way that you love the underdog.
Sorry E I couldn't resist this one; lets face it though you can find faults everywhere you go.
And yet ironically, Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe, apparently - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1566575/Britain-worst-for-teenage-pregnancy.html - and yet is one of the least religious countries - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Europe#Gallup_poll_2007.E2.80.932008.
Statistics, doncha love 'em?
... sorry to go on, but.. I think that the understanding of correlation vs causality may be the issue here.
Mississippi may be a very religious state, but it's also a poor one. Poor areas have higher rates of pregnancy due to lower levels of sex education, lower levels of female rights and so on.
Poorer areas (except in the UK) also tend to have higher rates of religious belief. Some would put that down to education - others to the way that the more empowered you feel, the less likely you are to resort to God.
So give the people of Mississippi more money, and they'll stop having so many babies.
G,
You're not going on at all; you make perfectly valid points, correlation does not imply causation.
In my post I pose that question, I said "is there a correlation", one of the experts in the field there suggests there may be. Of course that does not mean the same correlation exists elsewhere but even anecdotally you could see how such a correlation could exist.
Education, poverty, social organisation as well as religion would certainly play a part, we would be in complete agreement about that, my point is really that a Christian right/religious stance of "abstinence" being the way to tackle this is clearly not working!
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