Impact of Abstinence-Only Sex Education on Teen Birth Rates at the State Level

Sarah Permut

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/N2ND6T

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Impact of Abstinence-Only Sex Education on Teen Birth Rates at the State Level

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The US continues to experience disproportionately high teen birth, pregnancy, and STD rates compared to other developed nations and the appropriate type of sex education for American adolescents’ has been a constant source of debate. Over the last 13 years, the US federal government has invested over $1.5 billion in abstinence-only education in attempt to improve adolescent health outcomes. While there have been studies on how abstinence-only education programs’ impact their students, there has been little investigation into how abstinence-only education funding and programs influence health outcomes at the state level. Furthermore, there has been little research conducted on the impact of the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) funding program, a particularly restrictive form of abstinence-only education. Using teen birth rate data from the last 13 years, this study seeks to investigate whether abstinence-only education funding and programs impact teen birth rate at the state level. I analyze an original panel dataset using multivariate analysis and lagged dependent variable models to find that increases in funding levels for total abstinence-only and CBAE education, as well as the existence of CBAE programs, are associated with increases in teen birth rate. Evidence from lagged dependent variable models suggests that a causal interpretation of this association may be warranted. These findings indicate that abstinence-only education programs do not improve adolescents’ health outcomes, and provides potential evidence that abstinence-only education is harmful to young women’s health. [Senior Thesis: Yes][Major: Sociology][Minor: Global Health Studies]

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