MANSFIELD — Teen births in Richland County are on the decline.
According to statistics released by Richland Public Health, there were 1,153 births in Richland County (excluding Shelby) last year, including 121 teenager births (ages 13 to 19).
The percentage of teen births–just over 10 percent–was the lowest percentage in the last 25 years, according to the county health department.
Shelby’s health department compiles its own data for the city of Shelby. According to Shelby City Health Department officials, six of the 169 births in Shelby last year were teen births.
“The percentage of teen births has stayed pretty steady, but it’s been on a downward trend since about 2010, which is a really good thing,” said Reed Richmond, health educator at Richland Public Health.
Richmond credits sex education as one of the reasons for the decrease, another being the economy.
“At the health department, we like to see the numbers stay low. The lower the better because we’re talking about better pregnancy results and better birth results if you’re older,” he said.
He added that teens may not have access to the healthcare they need to ensure a successful pregnancy.
“That’s the reason why we get concerned about teen births–not so much because it’s a societal thing, but because we want to make sure people have healthy birth outcomes,” he said.
The number (and percentage) of teen births in the county (excluding Shelby) over the last 10 years is as follows:
Richmond said it’s important to consider the teen birth percentages of total births and not just the number of teen births because of the way the population has fluctuated over the years.
“When the population goes down, the number of teen births go down, so you can’t just say, ‘Look, the number of teen births have dropped.’ You’ve got to look at the percentages,” he said.
See the breakdown of births to teens in Richland County (except for Shelby) here:
“The vast majority of our teen births are to unwed teens,” Richmond said. A total of 115 births were to unwed teens, according to Richland Public Health’s data.
Richmond believes the percentage of births to all unwed mothers last year (43.5 percent) is the highest it’s ever been.
“One of the things that this doesn’t take into account–because there’s no way to track this–is the fact that a lot of people in the United States now are having children while they’re not married, even though they’re in long-term committed relationships. I happen to know four people who are not married and each of them have one, if not more children,” Richmond said.
This data is not to be confused with teen pregnancy rates. Richmond said the health department does not have teen pregnancy statistics for the county.
