Link between inequality and teen births studied

November 25, 2014

A University of Canterbury economics and finance postgraduate student’s research project has been unable to find a strong link between teen birth rates and socio-economic inequality.

In his honours research, student Nathan Chappell investigated the role of inequality in causing teen birth rates in the 66 territorial authorities within New Zealand. New Zealand has the second highest rate of teenage births among developed countries, after the United States. Teen births are associated with poor economic and social outcomes for the children of teen mothers.

In the year to March 2011, 4374 babies were born to New Zealand teenage mothers. Two thirds of the 4734 births were to mothers aged 18 and 19. Chappell’s project produced evidence regarding the link between socio-economic inequality and teen birth rates in New Zealand.

He says there is a perception that greater inequality within a territorial authority should be associated with higher teen birth rates due to teenagers feeling marginalised and unable to improve their lives through education and work.

His research work, supervised by Dr Philip Gunby, is preliminary and is some way off producing confirmed findings. However, initial results suggest that socio-economic inequality does not contribute to teen births.

Chappell also finds that that higher proportion of Maori or Pasifika, a higher proportion of unqualified people, and a lower proportion of religious people all increase the rate of teen births within New Zealand territorial authorities. His work at this stage is not strong enough to show that ethnicity, education and religion cause changes in teen birth rates but they are suggestive.

``My results suggest that differences in teen births are most likely to reflect unmodelled cultural and peer effects. This has important implications for which policies government targets resources to reduce teen births,” he says.

Dr Gunby says Chappell plans to further explore the issue using neighbourhood level census data.

Chappell has secured a research job at the Motu Economic and Public Policy Research centre, starting early next year. Motu is New Zealand’s leading non-profit economic and public policy research institute.

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