Thursday, August 16, 2012

In the Netherlands fewer than 5 of every 1000 mothers are younger than 20

For those of you who are rusty in reading Dutch, I have used Google translator (faster and about as good as my command of that language) to get to the message of this article.
In the Netherlands, in 2011 fewer teenagers than ever become a mother. 2365 girls under 20 had a child that is less than 5 in 1000.

The number of teenage mothers is lower than the CBS (official Dutch statistical agency) has ever seen. However, there are large differences between ethnic groups. The number of teenage mothers with a Dutch Antillean background is six times higher than the rate among native Dutch girls. Turkish teenage girls born in the Netherlands however have a baby less often than indigenous teenage girls. In recent decades the number of teenage mothers in the Netherlands has fallen sharply. Forty (40) years ago, 22.3 per thousand girls a child. In 2011 it was 4.8 per thousand.

To compare this with the US, the following excerpt is from an April 2012 article in USA Today:

The new numbers elaborate on federal data released in November that found the teen birthrate dropped 9% from 2009 to 2010, to a historic low of 34.3 births per 1,000 teens. That's down 44% from 61.8 in 1991. The all-time high was 96.3 during the Baby Boom year of 1957.
Paul Ryan, the other half of Ryan Romney, the one who actually has convictions, is in favor of banning birth control, although he probably will deny this now he is the chosen one to transform the robot to a human being. Ryan supported a 'fetal personhood' amendment, that will give legal protections to fetuses from the moment of fertilization. Of course, Toto, we are no longer talking about The Netherlands, we're now safely back in the US where almost half of all legislators want to tell you what do and where to do it.

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