Facts on Teen Pregnancy

My commenter Tim is back, and he raised a ruckus yesterday about my post on teenage sexual abstinence.

Tim says: "Turns out Mississippi has the highest teen pregnancy rates, while New England has the lowest." He also argues that "the top ten states for teen pregnancies are all red states"; and he questions my response that minorities are more likely to become pregnant. Tim thus holds, oddly, that partisanship rather than income demographics is the key to understanding the issue.

Well it turns out that Robert Stacy McCain's written an entry on this, "Teen Pregnancy: Fact vs. Spin":

The Associated Press:

Mississippi now has the nation's highest teen birth rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title, a new federal report says ....

The three states have large proportions of black and Hispanic teenagers — groups that traditionally have higher birth rates, experts noted.

Indeed, and if you take a little time to examine the actual CDC report, what you find is that the birth rate (births per 1,000) for females 15-19 breaks down like this:

White.........26.6
Black..........63.7
Hispanic....83.0

Ergo, states where blacks and Hispanics constitute a large proportion of the 15-19 population will tend to have high rates of teen pregnancy. Furthermore, the category "Hispanic" encompasses many nationalities, with varying rates of teen pregnancy, so that for instance, those of Mexican origin have a teen birth rate of 92.9, while Puerto Ricans have a teen birth rate of 69.3.

There's more at the link.

My question to Tim: Does partisanship correlate with low intelligence?