Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 21, 1993 TAG: 9309040318
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Number of people employed, new unemployment claims, new car sales, inter-banking checking transactions, Norfolk Southern coal loadings, business bankruptcies, new business licenses, building permits, home sales, etc.
These are important statistics, but they are not the only indicators of this community's economic health. Other, important - and troubling - ones are kept by Dr. Donald Stern, director of Roanoke's Department of Health. They show:
Roanoke has the highest teen-pregnancy rate for 15- to-19-year-olds in Virginia. (The rate is 176.5 per 1,000 female teen-agers.)
The city's total teen-pregnancy rate, for ages 10 to 19, is the third highest in the state. (The rate is 97.1 per 1,000.)
Both of these rates are twice as high as the comparable rates for the state of Virginia, based on the latest data available for comparison. These are not only social indicators. They are economic, too.
What do they mean?
Well, for one thing, they mean the situation is getting worse, not better. Where in recent comments on the subject, we might have said that the city's rate for 15- to 19-year-olds was "one of the highest" in the state, we now must observe that Roanoke has the dubious distinction of having the highest rate.
We also should note that the statewide rate for teen pregnancies, while still tragically high, hit a plateau in about 1980. Roanoke city's has continued to climb.
The statistics also suggest this:
One out of every 10 teen-age girls living in Roanoke will get pregnant this year. One out of every 10!
OK, you say, such statistics are dismaying - but an economic indicator?
Better believe it. They tell you more than "average weekday bus riders" about where Roanoke's economy is heading.
They tell you that Roanoke's high rate of children living in poverty - 23 percent, according to 1990 Census data - isn't headed down anytime soon. That Roanoke city schools, where currently half of the students come from "disadvantaged" households, will continue to have a disproportionately high number of disadvantaged children.
Sorry, but the reality is that teen-age mothers and the youngsters they produce are most likely to be impoverished, most likely to live lives of dependency on the state and joblessness in the labor market.
The statistics on teen pregnancies should alert you, if nothing else, to a growing burden on taxpayers' dollars and on the productivity of our economy.
The price in human terms is enormous; so are the economic costs.
Sorry, Dr. Stern's latest data are grim. But Roanokers ought to know what to expect if there continues to be so little done to reverse this alarming indicator.
by CNB