On teen pregnancy rates.
Hackney, one of London\’s most deprived boroughs, saw a 25% drop in its teen pregnancy rate; Blackburn, also with high levels of deprivation, saw a comparable improvement.
Have they controlled for a change in the local population?
This is very much a question, not an assertion, for I don\’t really know. But anecdotally I\’m under the impression that Hackney and Blackburn are two parts of the country which have had high immigration in recent years. Specifically Muslim immigration as well.
Now I really would not be surprised if in areas where the indigenous post-Christian population has been replaced by a culturally conservative (and whatever we might say about Islam, I think that culturally conservative over sexual matters is a fair description) Muslim one, teen pregnancy rates will drop.
So, does anybody know? Are these successes as trumpeted by Mad Mahdi actually successes of the programs, or of changes in the population the programs are being applied to?
Seems a fair point (a local resident writes). Hackney for decades has been a stop for successive groups of huddled masses, inc Vietnamese, Kurds, and most recently at my end of the borough, fairly visible numbers of dishevelled eastern European blokes. Whatever other problems they have, the immigrants of the last 20 years would not seem to me prone to a high teenage pregnancy rate. Presuming we mean out of wedlock teen pregnancy, that is.