State Abstinence Education Programs and Teen Fertility in the U.S.

Abstract

Title V, section 510 of the Social Security Act, passed in 1996 and implemented in 1998, appropriates funding to states for the purpose of educating minors on the benefits of abstinence before marriage. Despite considerable research on the impact of abstinence education on teen fertility outcomes, good quality population-level studies on state abstinence education using panel data are absent. This paper uses state-level data to analyze the impact of abstinence education on the birth rates for teens 15-17 years by evaluating the Title V, section 510 State Abstinence Education (SAE) program. For an average state, increasing spending by $50,000 per year on SAE can help avoid approximately four births to teenagers.