Family planning perspectives
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Eighty-two percent of never-married American women aged 20-29 have had sexual intercourse; black women are somewhat more likely than white women to have had intercourse. In all, 53 percent of never-married women in this age-group had intercourse at least once in the four weeks preceding the 1983 National Survey of Unmarried Women. Black women are more likely than white women to have done so (62 percent compared with 51 percent). ⋯ Thirty-three percent of unmarried 20-29-year-olds have had at least one pregnancy (about 40 percent of those who have ever had intercourse). Thirty-two percent of sexually active white women have been pregnant, compared with 70 percent of comparable black women. Furthermore, whereas 14 percent of white 20-29-year-olds have had an out-of-wedlock birth, 62 percent of black women have done so.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
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In 1983, the federal and state governments spent +340 million to provide contraceptive services--four percent more than they spent during the previous year. Title X of the Public Health Service Act, still the leading source of funding, accounted for +117 million, or 34 percent of all public expenditures. Almost as important was the +108 million (32 percent of total expenditures) provided through Title XIX of the Social Security Act (Medicaid). ⋯ Ninety percent of sterilization expenditures were made by the federal government--86 percent through the Medicaid program. In addition, the states and the federal government spent +71 million to provide 216,000 abortions in 1983. Unlike public funding for either contraceptive services or sterilization, almost all of the funding for abortion came from the states rather than from the federal government.
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The results of seven computer simulations suggest that strategies to prevent teenage childbearing may be more effective in reducing the number of young women who require welfare assistance than are strategies to improve the circumstances of teenagers who have already given birth. The first simulation constitutes a baseline projection, in which current levels and patterns of adolescent childbearing are assumed to continue to 1990. Three "preventive" simulations assume that no births or fewer births occur among teenagers during the projection period; and three "ameliorative" simulations assume that changes occur in the completed family size, marriage rate and educational attainment of teenage childbearers. ⋯ The strategy with the least impact is the education scenario, in which adolescent mothers are assumed to be no more likely to drop out of school than are other comparable teenagers. The primary reason for the surprisingly small effect appears to be the relatively low earnings of women--even when they are high school graduates. All of the experimental scenarios tested, however, bring about at least some reduction in projected government spending for the three major public assistance programs considered (Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid and Food Stamps).
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Comparative Study
Adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior: are they consistent?
Relationships between sexual attitudes and behavior among adolescents were studied in data collected by self-administered questionnaires from approximately 3,500 junior and senior high school students attending four inner-city schools during 1981-1982. An analysis of the results by sex, race and age found that 83 percent of sexually experienced adolescents cite a best age for first intercourse that is older than the age at which they themselves experienced that event, and 43 percent of them report a best age for first coitus older than their current age. In addition, 88 percent of young women who have had a baby say the best age at which to have a first birth is older than the age at which they first became mothers. ⋯ Women desire stronger relationships before having intercourse than do men, and women claim to have had a stronger relationship with their last sexual partner. Very few teenagers believe neither partner is responsible for pregnancy prevention, which tends to be viewed as a joint responsibility. Those who see it as a shared responsibility are slightly more likely than those who assign the responsibility to one or the other partner to have used a method at last intercourse, and they are considerably more likely to have used a method than are those who believe contraception is neither partner's responsibility.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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The federal government and the states spent $328 million to support the provision of contraceptive services in fiscal 1982, 13 percent less than they had spent the previous year. Federal funds for family planning services came from Title X of the Public Health Service Act, Title XIX of the Social Security Act (Medicaid), and the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) and Social Services block grants, which are administered by the states. Title X continued to provide the largest, although a diminishing, share of public funds for contraceptive services--36 percent of all such funds in 1982. (In 1980, Title X had accounted for 44 percent of public funding.) Medicaid expenditures for family planning totaled $94 million; $17 million was spent under the MCH block grant, and $46 million under the Social Services block grant. ⋯ The states spent $67 million and the federal government spent $1 million to provide abortions for 210,000 indigent women. These figures come from the 11th annual survey of state health and welfare agencies and state Medicaid programs by The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI). The AGI conducted this survey in January 1983 to determine the levels and sources of public funding for contraceptive, sterilization and abortion services in each state during FY 1982.