Study: Religion and Politics Affect Teen Birthrates More Than Sex Ed.

This from Inside School Research:

More comprehensive sexuality-education courses are correlated with slightly lower teenage birth rates—but that connection is not nearly as powerful as demographic, religious, and political factors in a student's home state.

Students in states that are more politically and religiously conservative have significantly higher birth rates than students in less-conservative states, according to new research published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. Researchers from Washington University, St. Louis, and the University of California, Los Angeles used data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to analyze the relationship between the number of births to girls between ages 15-17 from 1997-2005 and the components of states' sexuality-education programs from 1996-2004 (the years that would have influenced the birth rates for '97-'05). The study focuses on 24 states that participated in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's School Health Profiles, which document school health practices, for at least three years.

Researchers found that states with more schools teaching sex-ed topics topics like condom use, HIV-infection prevention, and pregnancy prevention had slightly lower birth rates on average. For instance, a 1 percent increase in the number of sex-ed topics taught, as captured by a state's School Health Profile, was associated with .6 fewer births per thousand.

But researchers also examined states' poverty levels, racial demographics, violent crime rates, political and religious climates, and abortion policies, and found a much stronger connection between these factors and birth rates...