If we update Hotz’s estimates to 2007 dollars and apply them to California teen birth trends, a surprising result indeed ensues. Rates of births by mothers under age 18 declined by 54% from 1991 to 2005, occasioning loud self-congratulation by various “teen pregnancy” prevention lobbies led by the Public Health Institute. Indeed, these lobbies, based on several “studies” by PHI and others that can only be called fraudulent, claimed teen mothers cost California taxpayers several billion dollars per year. They further claimed, without evidence, that their programs caused the decline in births by teen mothers and saved taxpayers money, meriting more funding for prevention lobbies.
However, the Hotz et al. analysis persuasively argues just the opposite...[t]hus—if “teen pregnancy prevention” programs actually are responsible for the reduction in teen births as they claim—then their efforts cost poorer younger mothers nearly $72 million in income and the state of California nearly $4 million in tax revenues in 2005. If the costs of the reduced teen births are apportioned over the entire 1991-2005 period, teen birth prevention has cost young mothers over $280,000,000 in income and the state $15 million in income and sales tax revenues in 2007 dollars.
