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Births to Unmarried Teens
Births to Unmarried Teens are the percent of all births to unmarried teens 15-19 years of
age. Seventy percent (4,511 out of 6,419) of the Arkansas teens that gave birth in 1999
were unmarried. Many of the factors that are associated with births to unmarried women
are also associated with births to unmarried teens. By definition, unmarried teen mothers
are young and have not completed their formal educations. They are also frequently poor
and receive inadequate prenatal care.
Calculation of the Births to Unmarried Teens percent is identical to the Births to Unmarried
Women percent, except that it uses data for women 15-19 years of age. In 1999, there
were 4,511 births to unmarried teens (aged 15-19), out of a total of 36,672 births.
Therefore, the percent of Births to Unmarried Teens = (4,511 / 36,672) X 100 = 12.3
percent.
Births to unmarried teens were highest in eastern Arkansas in the Delta region. For the
1995-1999 period, Phillips County had the highest percentage of births to unmarried teens,
accounting for 28.2 percent of live births in that county. Alternatively, Montgomery
County had the lowest percentage of births to unmarried teens during the period, with only
6.2 percent.
The patterns of percent of births to unmarried teens for the Public Health Regions closely
reflect those of births to unmarried women, as might be expected, since births to unmarried
teens account for roughly 36 percent of births to unmarried women. During the five-year
period, the Southeast region had the highest average with 20.2 percent and the Northwest
region at the lowest with 9.7.
Once again, races are significantly different. The average percent of births to White
unmarried teens from 1995-1999 was 8.6, while the percent of births to Black unmarried
teens was 26.8.
The percentage of births to unmarried Arkansas teens has remained fairly constant. There
has only been one statistically significant increase in this five-year period, going from 12.2
percent in 1995 to 12.8 in 1996. In 1999, 12.3 percent of births were to unmarried teens.
The average percentage of births to unmarried teens from 1994-1998 was 12.5.
As with births to unmarried women, the reader should be cautioned that the percent of
births to unmarried teens is influenced by several factors. These include the fertility of both
unmarried and married teens, as well as their relative distributions in the population.
While a fertility rate based on the number of unmarried teens in the population is more
desirable, such information is only available for census years.
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