San Joaquin Valley Leads State in Teen Birthrate

The farm belt of the San Joaquin Valley has the highest teen birthrate of any region in California -- more than twice as high as those in the urban and more affluent Bay Area, a statewide study released Thursday has found.

Moreover, the study, Maternity Before Maturity: Teen Birth Rates in California, by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that San Joaquin Valley teenagers have the highest birthrates among every racial and ethnic group studied: Latinas, whites, Asians and African Americans.

The report said concentrations of recent immigrants, who traditionally have a higher teen birthrate than native-born residents, play a role, but also cited poverty and access to jobs and health care as major reasons for the differences.

“For some teens, having a child results from not having much else going on in their lives, and to the extent that in the San Joaquin Valley you have high unemployment, poverty, low rates of college attendance, it’s not necessarily surprising you would have high birthrates, but the amount of difference still surprises me,” said the study’s author Hans P. Johnson, a demographer.

Using 2000 census data and other records, the San Joaquin Valley’s rate of 69 births per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19 compared with a statewide average of 47 births per 1,000. The Bay Area and the Sierras had the state’s lowest rate: 33 births per 1,000.

Among urban regions, the Inland Empire (Riverside and San Bernardino counties) had the highest rate -- 56 births per 1,000, compared with 37 births per 1,000 in the Sacramento area, 45 births per 1,000 in the San Diego region and 47 births per 1,000 in the South Coast region, which includes Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties.

The study found that counties with larger Latina and Southeast Asian populations tend to have relatively high teen birthrates. But equally telling, the birthrate among white teenagers was almost three times higher in the San Joaquin Valley than in the Bay Area.

Carol Whiteside, president of the Great Valley Center, a nonprofit community group in Modesto, said that early motherhood and low economic status are often passed from mother to child in a repeating cycle.

“A lot of what we’re working on in the Valley is the aspiration gap, getting people to believe they can have the same aspirations and expectations as those in more urban places.”

The dramatic geographic divergence was a disturbing finding in a report that was otherwise upbeat: The overall birthrate among all ethnic groups continues to fall steadily in California, mirroring a national trend. The state’s teen birthrate dropped from 73 to 44 births per 1,000 girls between 1991 and 2001.

The study found that a substantial share of the improvement can be attributed to a decline in birthrates among foreign-born Latinas.

But the study also found that compared with earlier decades, fewer teenage mothers in 2000 were married -- 22%, versus 37% in 1990 and 71% in 1970. That change may reflect an easing of societal attitudes toward unwed motherhood, researchers said.

The fathers responsible for the births are on average almost 4 years older than teen mothers, with a majority -- 51% -- older than 21.

According to the study, a substantial share of births among teenagers are a result of statutory rape.