By the numbers
By Sharon Egiebor
Overall, abstinence and lessons on sexual responsibility appear to be clicking for non-Hispanic black youth, says Joyce Abma, Ph.d., a social scientist with the National Center for Health Statistics. The number of high school black youth who had sex for the first time in 2005 dropped from 82 percent to 68 percent. While that is higher than the 43 percent for white students and 51 percent for Hispanics students, another study indicates that black youth are using contraceptives, she said. Black youth reported in 2005 using condoms more frequently during their last sex act -- 69 percent compared to 63 percent for non-Hispanic whites and 58 percent for Hispanics. “In the case of non-Hispanic blacks, even though the sexual experience rate is higher, it is being offset by more consistent use of a condom and a greater uptake of the other contraceptive methods such as depo provero,” said Abma, who is based in Hyattsville, Md. “When we talk about these things generally, it seems a huge effort in programs, both community and private, to encourage teens to delay sexual intercourse and to approach it responsibly. The youth development programs emphasis over all positive development in all dimensions of life is probably important.” According to the National Survey of Family Growth, black youth are more willing to use some of the relatively new contraceptive methods, such as implants and injections of depo provera. In 2002, 27 percent of non-Hispanic black females reported using injectable hormone methods, 24 percent of Hispanic females and 18 percent of non-Hispanic white females. Abma says these statistics line up with data on teen pregnancy and live births. Among non-Hispanic black teens under 20 years old, the birthrate dropped 48 percent between 1991 and 2005, the largest drop among the three ethnic groups. In 2005, Hispanics had the highest birth rate at 82 per 1,000, followed by non-Hispanic blacks at 61 per 1,000 and non-Hispanic whites at 26 per 1,000. The number of students having sex with four or more partners is also dropping from 19 percent in 1991 to 14 percent in 2005. For non-Hispanic blacks, it was 28 percent, 16 percent for Hispanics and 11 percent for non-Hispanic whites. Most of the statistics were released recently by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, which pulled data from more than 20 government sources. The report also showed that: • In 2005, 47 percent of high school students reported ever having had sexual intercourse. This was statistically the same rate as in 2003. • The proportion of students who reported ever having had sexual intercourse declined significantly from 1991 (54 percent) to 2001 (46 percent) and has remained stable from 2001 to 2005. • The percentage of students who reported ever having had sexual intercourse differs by grade. In 2005, 34 percent of 9th-grade students reported having ever had sexual intercourse, compared with 63 percent of 12th-grade students.