Jackson Jambalaya

Actually, there is a way to "spin" it, because you're looking at the wrong statistic. Notice that the article mentions percentages of children born to unmarried mothers, rather than birth rates of unmarried women. That's because the birth rates have fallen dramatically among married minority women, which raises the percentage of unmarried-parent babies even if the numbers of unmarried-parent babies stay exactly the same.

Say you've got 20 married women and 20 unmarried women. The married women average 2 kids apiece, while 5 of the unmarried women have 2 kids, and the remaining 15 don't have any kids at all. That's 50 kids total, 20% of whom belong to unmarried mothers. Now assume that 5 of the unmarried women still have 2 kids, but the married women only average 1 child apiece. Now your unmarried-parent children make up 33% of births -- with absolutely no change in the number of children born to unmarried mothers, or the number of unmarried women who have children.

For supporting evidence, please see page 6 of the 2000 CDC Vital Statistics report. The number of children born to unmarried black women actually FELL from about 80 births per 1000 women in 1980 to 75 births per 1000 in 1998, yet the percent of births to unmarried black women ROSE from 22% to 42%. Fewer unmarried black women are having babies than in 1980 -- it's just that even fewer married women are doing so.

It's just arithmetic, not social decline.

Wasn't someone pointing out the other day how the democratic party has achieved what slavery and Jim Crow could do, which was destroy the black family?

11:50 - KEEP YOUR COLLEGE ALGEBRA PROBLEM SOLVING QUESTIONS TO YOURSELF YOU GIVE ME A HEADACHE.

RIGHT. YOU ARE ONE CLUELESS DUMBASS. 3 KINDS OF LIES: LIES. DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS.

11:50 RIGHT. YOU ARE ONE CLUELESS DUMBASS. 3 KINDS OF LIES: LIES. DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS.

Good arguments for raising math requirements and for sex education in our public schools are made by those responding to 11:50.

Maybe, too SUNO is right not to graduate for the sake of graduating. Could give students an unrealistic opinion of their intelligence.

Nice try 11:50am. Your arithmetic and statistical confusion is quite entertaining.

College Algebra, Calculus 1-3, and Differential Equations, are not Statistics--at least not Engineering Statistics. It's basic math. It all depends on the basis of which the statistics are reported.

The USA Today report was based on the birth rate per 1000 UNMARRIED women aged 15-44. Birth rates for married women were not factored into the reporting of the statistics. Note that the report says births to "unmarried women" has risen. The 41% is based on # of births to unwed mothers per an estimated 1000 unwed mothers in the US. When you compare the total # of unwed births to the the # number of births over time, the statistics are not so powerfully motivating.

Dunno if 11:50 got it completely right, but the real the lesson is when people are reporting statistics--always question the basis for which they are calculated and reported. I can report percentages six ways to Sunday to make it influence the interpretation the general population will have upon reading the info...

For you attorneys out there: ALWAYS question the basis for the statistics which you come across, and read thru the basis with a fine tooth comb. It's so easy for
technical people to completely dupe you for pure entertainment. (Sorry, but for the most part, you all deserve it!)

Ohh Donna...give it a rest.

Anon@11:50 again:

6:27, you're incorrect about the 41% number. The 41% is the percentage of all babies born in the US whose mothers are unmarried, just as I said: 1,693,850 nonmarital births out of a total of 4,131,019 births in the US = 41% . It has nothing whatsoever to do with the unmarried birth rate, which the report linked from the news article notes actually fell almost 4% in 2009 to 50.9 women per 1000.

You are, however, perfectly right that birth rate is the relevant statistic here, and that percentages often do not mean what you think they mean.

11:50-- Agreed. I was wrong. Also agreed that the rate for unmarried women including teens and ethnic groups has gone down. If anyone cares to read about improvements, check out this link:

http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/2010/r101221.html

In the fifties, if a woman was an unmarried mother, it was a source of great shame, and she would do her best to hide it.Now we have turned into a degenerate society where this foolishness is celebrated and encouraged.