In Jamaica, 18 per cent of live births are to adolescent mothers. Even more remarkably, in rural areas, the birth rate is 74 per 1,000 births as compared to 51 per 1,000 births for the urban Kingston area. (Compare this to Canada at 10.28 or Barbados at 12.23 or the U.S. at 12.70 or Bahamas at 15.95).

Clearly, this is an issue if you regard it from the angle of poverty. Most of these young women do not have the resources, financial nor emotional, to take care of their babies. So the cycle of poverty continues.

Youth Opportunities Unlimited’s Cush Lewis will be on ROOTS FM 96.1 FM today on a show called Equal Spaces with host Marcia Moriah Skervin. He will discuss this very crucial issue for one hour.

Jamaica has made some progress in terms of reducing birth rates among adolescents from 4.5 in 1975 to 2.4 in 2008, but 47 per cent of births are still unplanned.

“Plus, the age-specific fertility rate of women who have the least years of education and economic means to care for these children are above that of their more educated and fortunate peers,” she said. “Thirty per cent of pregnancies to women pregnant by age 19 was unintended.”

This quote is from Racquel Reece of the National Family Planning Board. The NFPB aims to decrease the birth rate among adolescents to 65 per 1,000 by 2015.

Not only does teenage pregnancy here create serious problems in terms of adequately caring for the baby, but the young woman faces literal rejection by society. Girls are often expelled from school if they are found to be pregnant, thus they are denied their right to education. Some attend a special school, but many don’t and do not return to school. A Senator named Kamina Johnson Smith has tabled a bill to modify this situation, but it has yet to be passed. So this is a society that treats teenage pregnancy like a contagious disease to be ignored rather than one of concern and import to the entire community.

The practice of expelling pregnant adolescent girls has not yielded the desired result. Live births among girls 10-19 years have remained at around 20 per cent over the last decade. Showing empathy and making accommodations for pregnant girls in our school system is not an endorsement of early sexual initiation and teenage pregnancy. It simply means we care about what happens to the people around us.

This quote is from youth advocate Jaevion Nelson. Here is more from Mr. Nelson:

According to data produced by the Caribbean Community Commission on Youth Development in 2010, teen pregnancy costs us about US$12.5 million or 1.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The cost of not completing primary school is about 0.78 per cent of GDP, but if all children complete their primary education, GDP would increase by one per cent. Further, with full secondary enrolment, the Jamaican economy would grow by 1.37 per cent, and by 5.47 per cent with a 30 per cent enrolment at the tertiary level.

A third aspect to this issue brings the bigger picture into focus. As we saw, 47 per cent of births are unplanned (let’s assume a fifth of these are to adolescents or perhaps even more if we factor in people living below the poverty line). So the people who cannot afford to have children are still doing so, while wealthier Jamaicans are not having as many children or they are migrating. We see this in the replacement level fertility rate, which has yet to reach the 2.1 per cent births per woman target that was set for the year 2000.

If you are in Jamaica, tune in today to hear Cush talk about this very important issue.