Remember Colorado’s experiment with free LARC (that is IUDs and implanted contraception) for teens and poor women?
This article in the New York Times reports that
The birthrate among teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent.
Which led me to ask, what was the overall impact on fertility?
Turns out, the TFR dropped from 1.98 in 2009, to 1.79 in 2013, or from 25th in the nation (incl. D.C.) in 2010 (the first year wikipedia has, and sorts) to 13th. For comparison, the U.S. as a whole dropped from 2.0 to 1.86.
So what do you make of this?
I’ve previously expressed my concerns, both in the above link and here, about a new attitude that it’s a given that teens will not be dissuaded from having sex (and there’s nothing wrong with it anyway) so teen girls should be steered into being IUD’ed to the greatest extent possible, with side effects that girls might experience of little concern because of the greater impact of avoiding teen pregnancy.
But let’s bracket these concerns:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? (OK, actually the egg did come first, since dinosaurs laid eggs which, with each mutation, came one step closer to being chickens).
Did the overall desire for fewer children, believed to be at least in large part a result of the ailing economy, motivate more teens to avoid pregnancy just as much as it did their older sisters and aunts, so that a society-wide trend brought about the success of this program?
Or is the Colorado experiment in fact responsible for the fact that its birthrate dropped even more than the nation as a whole? And, if so, will the birthrate rebound as the impacted teens have children at a later age instead? Or is it inevitably the case that increases in the prevalance of ultra-highly-effective forms of contraception (meaning, greater success at prodding reluctant teens and women to use these) will produce fertility rates in the U.S. well below replacement, just as is the case in Europe?
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