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The statistics on abortion and social class
MAY 17, 2019 BY JANE THE ACTUARY2 COMMENTS
So in my prior post, I observed that the conventional wisdom that “the only people who get abortions are those experiencing hardship, and that means poor women” is not necessarily true. I pulled out some statistics from a study I had read which suggested that middle class women are just as likely to abort, but, after having published that post, I wanted to check the reliability of that study (which draws the conclusion, “poor women aren’t having as many abortions as they should, so for equality reasons we should make the procedure more widely available and free!” so there could have been a bias toward finding what they wanted to find. With that in mind, here’s how the Brookings scholars did their math in “Sex, contraception, or abortion? Explaining class gaps in unintended childbearing.”
To begin with, their data source was the National Survey of Family Growth from 2011 – 2013. This survey includes 10,416 men and women from ages 15 – 44. For their study, they actually wanted to look specifically at women at risk of unintended pregnancy, so they narrowed this group down to “single women not trying to get pregnant,” a group of 3,885 women in total. It’s reasonable enough to exclude women who describe themselves as actively trying to get pregnant, and they rationalize the exclusion of married women because they may be “less cautious about contraception” and “more likely to continue with an unintended pregnancy” and because “marriage is also correlated with income.”
They then divide the women into multiple groups by income level. They don’t explicitly state whether this is household income or individual income and, looking at the questionnaire, I can’t actually find the applicable question. Of course, for a single woman on her own it doesn’t matter, and maybe, in any case, survey-takers don’t count as “household income” that of an unmarried cohabitating partner, but you’d think it would make a difference for teens and young adults who are still dependents.
They assess whether there is a difference in frequency of sexual activity by income group, and conclude the answer is “no” (though, as I griped in my original 2015 blog post, they use as the marker having had sex at least once in the past year when, of course, more frequent sex is duh connected up with more chances for pregnancy; they use this statistic because, so far as I can tell, this is all the survey asks, or, rather, it asks about number of partners but that doesn’t really get at frequency with a given partner.
They then identify that, in this subgroup, poor women are considerably less likely to say that they had used a method of contraception — 15.9% of poverty-level women and 14.6% of near-poor (100 – 200% of poverty level) said they had used “no method” of contraception in the past year; all other income groups were at less than 10%. This appears to me to be a strangely-high number, because “some method of contraception at some point in the past year” seems a pretty low bar to clear, but, again, since the survey group includes anyone who reported having sex even a single time at any point in the past year, maybe not.
Then then calculate the pregnancy rates for this group. Again, this is not a rate for all women of childbearing age, but for all single women who report not actively seeking to get pregnant, and is in response to the question of whether they were pregnant at any point in the past year.
And, finally, of the women who said they were pregnant, they calculate the proportion of them for whom the pregnancy ended in abortion. My chart from the prior post backed out of this division with multiplication.
But there is another study which is cited much more often, using Guttmacher data, which comes up with a much higher prevalence of abortion among poor women.
The most recent set of calculations were published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2017 (also available at the NIH website) but use 2014 data (which is a bit later than the NSFG from 2011 – 2013 and maybe there’s a bit of a difference due to changes in just these few years, as the abortion rate has been decreasing, but I don’t know that this helps understand things).
This study used data from three sources: the Guttmacher Institute’s 2014 Abortion Patient Survey (APS), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the NSFG. The APS is based on surveys of abortion clinics, who were themselves asked to survey women getting abortions, by asking women to privately fill out questionnaires. These questions asked about demographic characteristics, union status, and “poverty” (it doesn’t say income level, but the numbers don’t make sense unless they also asked about income level and family size more generally so as to be able to classify people in income buckets). Because the study also needed to know the prevalence of women in each category, they used the ACS and the NSFG for these overall characteristics.
The results for this study are rather different — I’ve added them to the prior table (the third rate is the rate for all women with incomes over 200% FPL).
Also, the total abortion rate for all women of childbearing years was 1.46%.
So why on earth are these two statistics so different?
The statistical breakdowns in the AJPH data explain the motivation the Brookings scholars had in excluding married women, as it is this group which had the lowest abortion prevalence:
- Married, 0.55%
- Cohabitating unmarried 3.1%
- Neither married nor cohabitating, 1.7%
Because women of middle-class and upper-middle-class income levels are far more likely to be married, this could explain to at least some degree why the rates for “percent of single women not trying to get pregnant” vs. “all women” differ. According to the American Community Survey, as analyzed by the Institute for Family Studies, 26% of poor adults ages 18 – 55, 39% of working class adults, and 56% of middle and upper-class adults are married; and 13%/10%/5% respectively are cohabitating. But this adjustment accounts for some of the differences between the data, not all. Are there also differences in how women are classified, with respect to income group, with the APS overclassifying women as “poor” or the NSFG underclassifying them, for example, with women at abortion clinics more likely to exclude income from other family members in answering the question on “family income” or even with different definitions of what “family income” even is?
And none of this explains the broader discrepancy between these two data sources in terms of the overall abortion rates they calculate – 1.46% vs. something less than 1%..
So this is where I leave readers; I have no answer here, which is not particularly helpful, except to document that not every study gives the pat answer you’d like to have, which is itself a reminder to be skeptical of those studies which do claim simple answers.
- TAGGED WITH:
- UNCATEGORIZED
- ABORTION
- DATA ANALYSIS
- SURVEYS
PREVIOUS POSTWho are the real pro-lifers?NEXT POSTThe Game of Thrones insight you’ve all been waiting forRECENT COMMENTS 2 COMMENTS“Just wanted you to know that I have loved reading your articles!” LITTLECANARY
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NEW JOB! A FEW PERSONAL UPDATES“Democrat policies now include, “If you want an abortion, other taxpayers should be made to …” ARKANABAR
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The statistics on abortion and social class
MAY 17, 2019 BY JANE THE ACTUARY2 COMMENTS
So in my prior post, I observed that the conventional wisdom that “the only people who get abortions are those experiencing hardship, and that means poor women” is not necessarily true. I pulled out some statistics from a study I had read which suggested that middle class women are just as likely to abort, but, after having published that post, I wanted to check the reliability of that study (which draws the conclusion, “poor women aren’t having as many abortions as they should, so for equality reasons we should make the procedure more widely available and free!” so there could have been a bias toward finding what they wanted to find. With that in mind, here’s how the Brookings scholars did their math in “Sex, contraception, or abortion? Explaining class gaps in unintended childbearing.”
To begin with, their data source was the National Survey of Family Growth from 2011 – 2013. This survey includes 10,416 men and women from ages 15 – 44. For their study, they actually wanted to look specifically at women at risk of unintended pregnancy, so they narrowed this group down to “single women not trying to get pregnant,” a group of 3,885 women in total. It’s reasonable enough to exclude women who describe themselves as actively trying to get pregnant, and they rationalize the exclusion of married women because they may be “less cautious about contraception” and “more likely to continue with an unintended pregnancy” and because “marriage is also correlated with income.”
They then divide the women into multiple groups by income level. They don’t explicitly state whether this is household income or individual income and, looking at the questionnaire, I can’t actually find the applicable question. Of course, for a single woman on her own it doesn’t matter, and maybe, in any case, survey-takers don’t count as “household income” that of an unmarried cohabitating partner, but you’d think it would make a difference for teens and young adults who are still dependents.
They assess whether there is a difference in frequency of sexual activity by income group, and conclude the answer is “no” (though, as I griped in my original 2015 blog post, they use as the marker having had sex at least once in the past year when, of course, more frequent sex is duh connected up with more chances for pregnancy; they use this statistic because, so far as I can tell, this is all the survey asks, or, rather, it asks about number of partners but that doesn’t really get at frequency with a given partner.
They then identify that, in this subgroup, poor women are considerably less likely to say that they had used a method of contraception — 15.9% of poverty-level women and 14.6% of near-poor (100 – 200% of poverty level) said they had used “no method” of contraception in the past year; all other income groups were at less than 10%. This appears to me to be a strangely-high number, because “some method of contraception at some point in the past year” seems a pretty low bar to clear, but, again, since the survey group includes anyone who reported having sex even a single time at any point in the past year, maybe not.
Then then calculate the pregnancy rates for this group. Again, this is not a rate for all women of childbearing age, but for all single women who report not actively seeking to get pregnant, and is in response to the question of whether they were pregnant at any point in the past year.
And, finally, of the women who said they were pregnant, they calculate the proportion of them for whom the pregnancy ended in abortion. My chart from the prior post backed out of this division with multiplication.
But there is another study which is cited much more often, using Guttmacher data, which comes up with a much higher prevalence of abortion among poor women.
The most recent set of calculations were published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2017 (also available at the NIH website) but use 2014 data (which is a bit later than the NSFG from 2011 – 2013 and maybe there’s a bit of a difference due to changes in just these few years, as the abortion rate has been decreasing, but I don’t know that this helps understand things).
This study used data from three sources: the Guttmacher Institute’s 2014 Abortion Patient Survey (APS), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the NSFG. The APS is based on surveys of abortion clinics, who were themselves asked to survey women getting abortions, by asking women to privately fill out questionnaires. These questions asked about demographic characteristics, union status, and “poverty” (it doesn’t say income level, but the numbers don’t make sense unless they also asked about income level and family size more generally so as to be able to classify people in income buckets). Because the study also needed to know the prevalence of women in each category, they used the ACS and the NSFG for these overall characteristics.
The results for this study are rather different — I’ve added them to the prior table (the third rate is the rate for all women with incomes over 200% FPL).
Also, the total abortion rate for all women of childbearing years was 1.46%.
So why on earth are these two statistics so different?
The statistical breakdowns in the AJPH data explain the motivation the Brookings scholars had in excluding married women, as it is this group which had the lowest abortion prevalence:
- Married, 0.55%
- Cohabitating unmarried 3.1%
- Neither married nor cohabitating, 1.7%
Because women of middle-class and upper-middle-class income levels are far more likely to be married, this could explain to at least some degree why the rates for “percent of single women not trying to get pregnant” vs. “all women” differ. According to the American Community Survey, as analyzed by the Institute for Family Studies, 26% of poor adults ages 18 – 55, 39% of working class adults, and 56% of middle and upper-class adults are married; and 13%/10%/5% respectively are cohabitating. But this adjustment accounts for some of the differences between the data, not all. Are there also differences in how women are classified, with respect to income group, with the APS overclassifying women as “poor” or the NSFG underclassifying them, for example, with women at abortion clinics more likely to exclude income from other family members in answering the question on “family income” or even with different definitions of what “family income” even is?
And none of this explains the broader discrepancy between these two data sources in terms of the overall abortion rates they calculate – 1.46% vs. something less than 1%..
So this is where I leave readers; I have no answer here, which is not particularly helpful, except to document that not every study gives the pat answer you’d like to have, which is itself a reminder to be skeptical of those studies which do claim simple answers.
- TAGGED WITH:
- UNCATEGORIZED
- ABORTION
- DATA ANALYSIS
- SURVEYS
PREVIOUS POSTWho are the real pro-lifers?NEXT POSTThe Game of Thrones insight you’ve all been waiting forRECENT COMMENTS 2 COMMENTS“Just wanted you to know that I have loved reading your articles!” LITTLECANARY
NEW JOB! A FEW PERSONAL UPDATES“congrats on the new job, I’m glad it’s working out so far.” BEMUSED
NEW JOB! A FEW PERSONAL UPDATES“Democrat policies now include, “If you want an abortion, other taxpayers should be made to …” ARKANABAR
ON THE END OF ROE, AND …”“Is this a joke? Sheesh.” JIM BEAM’S GIRL
BROWSE OUR ARCHIVES Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized Select a Month August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013
GET THE LATEST UPDATES FROMJANE THE ACTUARYAND THE PATHEOSCATHOLICCHANNELYOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE SPECIAL OFFERS FROM OUR PARTNERS THAT HELP MAKE THIS CONTENT FREE FOR YOU. YOU CAN OPT OUT AT ANY TIME.
POPULAR AT PATHEOSCatholic1
The Seven Deadly Sins and Right-Winged…ALL TEXANS, NOT SOME TEXANS2
Crouch We Here, And Lurk: Short…EVE TUSHNET3
Through the Narrow GateSTEEL MAGNIFICAT4
Church, It’s Time to Self-Examine, Change,…ALL TEXANS, NOT SOME TEXANSRELATED POSTS FROMJane the Actuary
CATHOLICOn the end of Roe, and why I’m…JANE THE ACTUARY
CATHOLICAn Imaginary Speech from Amy KlobucharJANE THE ACTUARY
CATHOLICConfessions of a Never-Dem-erJANE THE ACTUARY
CATHOLICNo, there is no “right to a baby…JANE THE ACTUARYTRENDING AT PATHEOS CATHOLIC
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The statistics on abortion and social class
MAY 17, 2019 BY JANE THE ACTUARY2 COMMENTS
So in my prior post, I observed that the conventional wisdom that “the only people who get abortions are those experiencing hardship, and that means poor women” is not necessarily true. I pulled out some statistics from a study I had read which suggested that middle class women are just as likely to abort, but, after having published that post, I wanted to check the reliability of that study (which draws the conclusion, “poor women aren’t having as many abortions as they should, so for equality reasons we should make the procedure more widely available and free!” so there could have been a bias toward finding what they wanted to find. With that in mind, here’s how the Brookings scholars did their math in “Sex, contraception, or abortion? Explaining class gaps in unintended childbearing.”
To begin with, their data source was the National Survey of Family Growth from 2011 – 2013. This survey includes 10,416 men and women from ages 15 – 44. For their study, they actually wanted to look specifically at women at risk of unintended pregnancy, so they narrowed this group down to “single women not trying to get pregnant,” a group of 3,885 women in total. It’s reasonable enough to exclude women who describe themselves as actively trying to get pregnant, and they rationalize the exclusion of married women because they may be “less cautious about contraception” and “more likely to continue with an unintended pregnancy” and because “marriage is also correlated with income.”
They then divide the women into multiple groups by income level. They don’t explicitly state whether this is household income or individual income and, looking at the questionnaire, I can’t actually find the applicable question. Of course, for a single woman on her own it doesn’t matter, and maybe, in any case, survey-takers don’t count as “household income” that of an unmarried cohabitating partner, but you’d think it would make a difference for teens and young adults who are still dependents.
They assess whether there is a difference in frequency of sexual activity by income group, and conclude the answer is “no” (though, as I griped in my original 2015 blog post, they use as the marker having had sex at least once in the past year when, of course, more frequent sex is duh connected up with more chances for pregnancy; they use this statistic because, so far as I can tell, this is all the survey asks, or, rather, it asks about number of partners but that doesn’t really get at frequency with a given partner.
They then identify that, in this subgroup, poor women are considerably less likely to say that they had used a method of contraception — 15.9% of poverty-level women and 14.6% of near-poor (100 – 200% of poverty level) said they had used “no method” of contraception in the past year; all other income groups were at less than 10%. This appears to me to be a strangely-high number, because “some method of contraception at some point in the past year” seems a pretty low bar to clear, but, again, since the survey group includes anyone who reported having sex even a single time at any point in the past year, maybe not.
Then then calculate the pregnancy rates for this group. Again, this is not a rate for all women of childbearing age, but for all single women who report not actively seeking to get pregnant, and is in response to the question of whether they were pregnant at any point in the past year.
And, finally, of the women who said they were pregnant, they calculate the proportion of them for whom the pregnancy ended in abortion. My chart from the prior post backed out of this division with multiplication.
But there is another study which is cited much more often, using Guttmacher data, which comes up with a much higher prevalence of abortion among poor women.
The most recent set of calculations were published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2017 (also available at the NIH website) but use 2014 data (which is a bit later than the NSFG from 2011 – 2013 and maybe there’s a bit of a difference due to changes in just these few years, as the abortion rate has been decreasing, but I don’t know that this helps understand things).
This study used data from three sources: the Guttmacher Institute’s 2014 Abortion Patient Survey (APS), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the NSFG. The APS is based on surveys of abortion clinics, who were themselves asked to survey women getting abortions, by asking women to privately fill out questionnaires. These questions asked about demographic characteristics, union status, and “poverty” (it doesn’t say income level, but the numbers don’t make sense unless they also asked about income level and family size more generally so as to be able to classify people in income buckets). Because the study also needed to know the prevalence of women in each category, they used the ACS and the NSFG for these overall characteristics.
The results for this study are rather different — I’ve added them to the prior table (the third rate is the rate for all women with incomes over 200% FPL).
Also, the total abortion rate for all women of childbearing years was 1.46%.
So why on earth are these two statistics so different?
The statistical breakdowns in the AJPH data explain the motivation the Brookings scholars had in excluding married women, as it is this group which had the lowest abortion prevalence:
- Married, 0.55%
- Cohabitating unmarried 3.1%
- Neither married nor cohabitating, 1.7%
Because women of middle-class and upper-middle-class income levels are far more likely to be married, this could explain to at least some degree why the rates for “percent of single women not trying to get pregnant” vs. “all women” differ. According to the American Community Survey, as analyzed by the Institute for Family Studies, 26% of poor adults ages 18 – 55, 39% of working class adults, and 56% of middle and upper-class adults are married; and 13%/10%/5% respectively are cohabitating. But this adjustment accounts for some of the differences between the data, not all. Are there also differences in how women are classified, with respect to income group, with the APS overclassifying women as “poor” or the NSFG underclassifying them, for example, with women at abortion clinics more likely to exclude income from other family members in answering the question on “family income” or even with different definitions of what “family income” even is?
And none of this explains the broader discrepancy between these two data sources in terms of the overall abortion rates they calculate – 1.46% vs. something less than 1%..
So this is where I leave readers; I have no answer here, which is not particularly helpful, except to document that not every study gives the pat answer you’d like to have, which is itself a reminder to be skeptical of those studies which do claim simple answers.
- TAGGED WITH:
- UNCATEGORIZED
- ABORTION
- DATA ANALYSIS
- SURVEYS
PREVIOUS POSTWho are the real pro-lifers?NEXT POSTThe Game of Thrones insight you’ve all been waiting forRECENT COMMENTS 2 COMMENTS“Just wanted you to know that I have loved reading your articles!” LITTLECANARY
NEW JOB! A FEW PERSONAL UPDATES“congrats on the new job, I’m glad it’s working out so far.” BEMUSED
NEW JOB! A FEW PERSONAL UPDATES“Democrat policies now include, “If you want an abortion, other taxpayers should be made to …” ARKANABAR
ON THE END OF ROE, AND …”“Is this a joke? Sheesh.” JIM BEAM’S GIRL
BROWSE OUR ARCHIVES Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized Select a Month August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013
GET THE LATEST UPDATES FROMJANE THE ACTUARYAND THE PATHEOSCATHOLICCHANNELYOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE SPECIAL OFFERS FROM OUR PARTNERS THAT HELP MAKE THIS CONTENT FREE FOR YOU. YOU CAN OPT OUT AT ANY TIME.
POPULAR AT PATHEOSCatholic1
The Seven Deadly Sins and Right-Winged…ALL TEXANS, NOT SOME TEXANS2
Crouch We Here, And Lurk: Short…EVE TUSHNET3
Through the Narrow GateSTEEL MAGNIFICAT4
Church, It’s Time to Self-Examine, Change,…ALL TEXANS, NOT SOME TEXANSRELATED POSTS FROMJane the Actuary
CATHOLICOn the end of Roe, and why I’m…JANE THE ACTUARY
CATHOLICAn Imaginary Speech from Amy KlobucharJANE THE ACTUARY
CATHOLICConfessions of a Never-Dem-erJANE THE ACTUARY
CATHOLICNo, there is no “right to a baby…JANE THE ACTUARYTRENDING AT PATHEOS CATHOLIC
Truth And LoveThe truth is good. This is why the knowing and willing violation…
Looks Shiny, Feels RealI have moaned about summer ending, but today seeing my classroom and…
Another Pregnancy Center VandalizedIn the past few weeks, a considerable number of Crisis Pregnancy Centers…
Sam Harris: Trump As Existential Threat Justifies Mass…Do you agree with Sam Harris’ justification of voter manipulation? Sam Harris—New…
Church, It’s Time to Self-Examine, Change, and RepentAs I sipped on my morning coffee today, I located three website…
So, are “bullet rosaries” a thing or not? So … are bullet rosaries “a thing” or did somebody make…VIEW ALL CATHOLIC BLOGSWhat Are Your Thoughts?LEAVE A COMMENThttps://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&f=janetheactuary&t_i=13994%20https%3A%2F%2Fadmin.patheos.com%2Fblogs%2Fjanetheactuary%2F%3Fp%3D13994&t_u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.patheos.com%2Fblogs%2Fjanetheactuary%2F2019%2F05%2Fthe-statistics-on-abortion-and-social-class.html&t_e=The%20statistics%20on%20abortion%20and%20social%20class&t_d=The%20statistics%20on%20abortion%20and%20social%20class&t_t=The%20statistics%20on%20abortion%20and%20social%20class&s_o=default#version=ad2eac0e6aa7c265937636beaab16a92
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The statistics on abortion and social class
MAY 17, 2019 BY JANE THE ACTUARY2 COMMENTS
So in my prior post, I observed that the conventional wisdom that “the only people who get abortions are those experiencing hardship, and that means poor women” is not necessarily true. I pulled out some statistics from a study I had read which suggested that middle class women are just as likely to abort, but, after having published that post, I wanted to check the reliability of that study (which draws the conclusion, “poor women aren’t having as many abortions as they should, so for equality reasons we should make the procedure more widely available and free!” so there could have been a bias toward finding what they wanted to find. With that in mind, here’s how the Brookings scholars did their math in “Sex, contraception, or abortion? Explaining class gaps in unintended childbearing.”
To begin with, their data source was the National Survey of Family Growth from 2011 – 2013. This survey includes 10,416 men and women from ages 15 – 44. For their study, they actually wanted to look specifically at women at risk of unintended pregnancy, so they narrowed this group down to “single women not trying to get pregnant,” a group of 3,885 women in total. It’s reasonable enough to exclude women who describe themselves as actively trying to get pregnant, and they rationalize the exclusion of married women because they may be “less cautious about contraception” and “more likely to continue with an unintended pregnancy” and because “marriage is also correlated with income.”
They then divide the women into multiple groups by income level. They don’t explicitly state whether this is household income or individual income and, looking at the questionnaire, I can’t actually find the applicable question. Of course, for a single woman on her own it doesn’t matter, and maybe, in any case, survey-takers don’t count as “household income” that of an unmarried cohabitating partner, but you’d think it would make a difference for teens and young adults who are still dependents.
They assess whether there is a difference in frequency of sexual activity by income group, and conclude the answer is “no” (though, as I griped in my original 2015 blog post, they use as the marker having had sex at least once in the past year when, of course, more frequent sex is duh connected up with more chances for pregnancy; they use this statistic because, so far as I can tell, this is all the survey asks, or, rather, it asks about number of partners but that doesn’t really get at frequency with a given partner.
They then identify that, in this subgroup, poor women are considerably less likely to say that they had used a method of contraception — 15.9% of poverty-level women and 14.6% of near-poor (100 – 200% of poverty level) said they had used “no method” of contraception in the past year; all other income groups were at less than 10%. This appears to me to be a strangely-high number, because “some method of contraception at some point in the past year” seems a pretty low bar to clear, but, again, since the survey group includes anyone who reported having sex even a single time at any point in the past year, maybe not.
Then then calculate the pregnancy rates for this group. Again, this is not a rate for all women of childbearing age, but for all single women who report not actively seeking to get pregnant, and is in response to the question of whether they were pregnant at any point in the past year.
And, finally, of the women who said they were pregnant, they calculate the proportion of them for whom the pregnancy ended in abortion. My chart from the prior post backed out of this division with multiplication.
But there is another study which is cited much more often, using Guttmacher data, which comes up with a much higher prevalence of abortion among poor women.
The most recent set of calculations were published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2017 (also available at the NIH website) but use 2014 data (which is a bit later than the NSFG from 2011 – 2013 and maybe there’s a bit of a difference due to changes in just these few years, as the abortion rate has been decreasing, but I don’t know that this helps understand things).
This study used data from three sources: the Guttmacher Institute’s 2014 Abortion Patient Survey (APS), the American Community Survey (ACS), and the NSFG. The APS is based on surveys of abortion clinics, who were themselves asked to survey women getting abortions, by asking women to privately fill out questionnaires. These questions asked about demographic characteristics, union status, and “poverty” (it doesn’t say income level, but the numbers don’t make sense unless they also asked about income level and family size more generally so as to be able to classify people in income buckets). Because the study also needed to know the prevalence of women in each category, they used the ACS and the NSFG for these overall characteristics.
The results for this study are rather different — I’ve added them to the prior table (the third rate is the rate for all women with incomes over 200% FPL).
Also, the total abortion rate for all women of childbearing years was 1.46%.
So why on earth are these two statistics so different?
The statistical breakdowns in the AJPH data explain the motivation the Brookings scholars had in excluding married women, as it is this group which had the lowest abortion prevalence:
- Married, 0.55%
- Cohabitating unmarried 3.1%
- Neither married nor cohabitating, 1.7%
Because women of middle-class and upper-middle-class income levels are far more likely to be married, this could explain to at least some degree why the rates for “percent of single women not trying to get pregnant” vs. “all women” differ. According to the American Community Survey, as analyzed by the Institute for Family Studies, 26% of poor adults ages 18 – 55, 39% of working class adults, and 56% of middle and upper-class adults are married; and 13%/10%/5% respectively are cohabitating. But this adjustment accounts for some of the differences between the data, not all. Are there also differences in how women are classified, with respect to income group, with the APS overclassifying women as “poor” or the NSFG underclassifying them, for example, with women at abortion clinics more likely to exclude income from other family members in answering the question on “family income” or even with different definitions of what “family income” even is?
And none of this explains the broader discrepancy between these two data sources in terms of the overall abortion rates they calculate – 1.46% vs. something less than 1%..
So this is where I leave readers; I have no answer here, which is not particularly helpful, except to document that not every study gives the pat answer you’d like to have, which is itself a reminder to be skeptical of those studies which do claim simple answers.
- TAGGED WITH:
- UNCATEGORIZED
- ABORTION
- DATA ANALYSIS
- SURVEYS
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