There’s a new paper out, Religiosity and teen birth rate in the United States, which describes the positive relationship between teen births and religious conservatism on the state level. How positive? Here’s the scatterplot:
The relationship holds if you control for income & abortion rate (in the latter case there could of course be a “trade-off” between abortion rate and teen births). But they don’t control for race, which is important as blacks are very religiously conservative, are prone to teen births, and tend to concentrate in states where whites are also religiously conservative. That being said, I suspect that this relationship would hold even controlling for race, though it might become weaker. But, if you look within states it is probably the case that in fact the very religious may have fewer teen births, all variables controlled (see the introduction of the paper for pointers to this literature, especially stuff from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth).
These issues are complex. There is a reasonable amount of cross-national data which suggests that religious people tend to be, well, less messed up than non-religious people. And yet, there is also a reasonable amount of cross-national data that irreligious nations tend to be less messed up than religious nations. How to square this circle? It seems possible that extremely high levels of societal religiosity can only emerge in specific circumstances, just as extremely high levels of irreligiosity can only emerge in specific circumstances. The former case is more common than the latter case historically and internationally, but the latter case seems to be the trend in what we would term “developed nations,” that is, those nations which we’d actually want to live in. The slide toward secularization is even occurring in the United States, the great exception to the pattern of developed nations being secular. Between 1990 and 2009 the proportion of the American population which affirmed “No religion” doubled. And did society collapse in that period? No, rather, violent crime rates declined! I don’t believe that there’s really any first-order causal relationship, rather, secularization and other changes are being driven by complex processes which we are not privy to. But we can observe the patterns and commonalities. Developed societies are very secular, or getting more secular. Yes, religious people may be more conscientious, but extremely religious societies are not more conscientious. These are the realities, and wishing that things were not so will change nothing.
Perhaps I’m being picky but isn’t it a bit odd that this study refers to teen birth rate without making any mention of marital age differences between more and less religious states?
I live in the Pacific Northwest, which is supposedly the least “churched” region of the country. If the social conservatives theory that abandoning religion leads to social decline, one would expect that the Pacific Northwest would be the most violent, crime-ridden region of the U.S. It is actually the least crime-ridden, least violent region of the U.S. So far, their theory does not hold up.
The farther we go, crime is getting worse precisely because secularists filled the vacuum left by Christians in the culture forming industries; politics, et al.
Is Figi a developed nation? They are a Christian nation.
Being religious is an improper term. The will is a poor excuse for true grace.
The farther we go, crime is getting worse precisely because secularists filled the vacuum left by Christians in the culture forming industries; politics, et al.
while back in the real world crime has been declining for the past half generation in the developed world….
Looking at the teenage pregnancy rate as a map of the US, it seems that the correlation is far stronger to race than it is to religiosity.
for the record, the r-squared on the state level teen birth rates vs. race
0.14 for blacks (correlation = 0.37)
0.18 for non-hispanic whites (correlation = -0.42)
lower than i would have thought. will look at county level data later….
Who cares?
Not everyone lives in the “real world”.
I am sure this explains a lot of the misunderstandings. š
Don’t more religious states have more births, full stop? So maybe there’s nothing special about the teens in these states also having more kids?
Following up on Sully – has the data been controlled for marriage rates? 18 and 19-year-olds, who are far more likely than younger teens to have children, are more likely to be married if religious.
Though I think there is something to the conclusion of the paper that more religious teens are less likely to use birth control, for a variety of reasons.
keep the questions coming. i’ll probably do a reanalysis of the data at some point….
David (Razib),
The teen births may be girls getting knocked up where the guy is not in their life or it may be the girl getting married early. The conservative regions of the country are known for people getting married young and the definition of teenager does include 18 and 19 year olds, which is when conservative kids get married right out of high school.
I suggest looking up welfare statistics. This ought to help parse out the girls who got knocked up and who are truly single mothers as compared to those who got married young or are in relationships where the guy is in their life even though they are not married. There will be some correlation with the truly single mothers and the welfare rates.
You really going to have to do the work on this because both the liberals and social conservatives seem to have a vested interest in continued obfuscation of this issue.
while back in the real world crime has been declining for the past half generation in the developed worldā¦.
@David Hume
I was referring to immorality, which is the impetus for crime.
If crime declined where did the “impetus” went?
I was referring to immorality
define immorality.
As Charles Murray has pointed out:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007348
crime rates are down since the 70s only because we are locking up more criminals. Criminality, the “percentage of the population under correctional supervision”, is higher now than it was then.
crime rates are down since the 70s only because we are locking up more criminals. Criminality, the āpercentage of the population under correctional supervisionā, is higher now than it was then.
i don’t think this holds for other developed nations. same trend of declining crime rates.
There is a theory that postulates that criminality is declining because there is less Lead in the environment. Lead started being removed from gasoline in the mid-70’s and Lead paints were banned shortly there after. It is known that mild Lead poisoning causes violent behavior as well as a 5-10 point reduction in IQ. Remove the sources of Lead poisoning and violent behavior declines. I don’t know if this theory is true or not. But it is certainly credible.
@David Hume
That which the Founding Fathers said was contrary to the Gospel and the Divine Law. Furthermore, because of human depravity, prohibiting Bible reading in public schools, for which the framers said was the basis for Republicanism, surely lead to the destruction of morals.
Once Christianity was taken out of the public square, the decline started, from teen pregnancy, rape, murder, to separation of church and state, etc.
Once Jesus was removed from The authority, the Law lost its savor. Man now says to the charge of adultery, “why not, you?” Apart from agreeing, the framers executed adulterers, because they thought the N.T. taught so.
@
oft
All this sound incredibly confused, forgot your medications?
Once Christianity was taken out of the public square, the decline started, from teen pregnancy, rape, murder, to separation of church and state, etc.
Criminality, both violent and property, has declined substantially since the early 90’s. Also, the region of the country that I live in (Pacific Northwest) has the lowest percentage population of those who identify with traditional religious memes. Yet, the Pacific Northwest has lower levels of criminality, in general, than the rest of the United States.
These facts do not support your decline of morality argument. Also, you fail to provide a definition of morality.
Sin lies in the causing of intentional harm to others. All other definitions of sin are invented non-sense.
One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.
@kurt9
Overall, the percentage of criminality is higher, while more of the population is locked up.
The definition of morality comes from the Lawgiver the Founding Fathers proclaimed.
Sin is missing God’s demand of holiness, which everyone is guilty of. My theology is not based on writings, but based on the person of the Creator Jesus Christ.
The lower level of criminality in the Pacific Northwest is part of a pattern dating back to colonial days. In Albion’s Seed, David Hackett Fischer notes that in Colonial America violent crime rate was much higher in the southern colonies than in the norhtern ones, with the lowest rate of violent crime being found in New England (although the northern colonies did have higher rates of property crime).
Much of this tendency remains today. In the 17th & 18th centuries, New England was the most religious part of what is today the U.S. while the southern colonies were much less devout. Today, this pattern has been reversed, with the northern tier of the country being the most secular, while the south is the most religious. The comparative rates of violent crime, however, continue to show traces of the pattern established in colonial days, with the parts of the country originally settled by the descendents of Puritans still having some lowest rates in the nation.
Part of the explanation for differing rates of criminality in differnt parts of the U.S. are due to cultural traditions, not necessarily to differing rates of religiosity.
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