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Introduction
Teen pregnancy is a major issue in the society and with it, come several consequences such as
teens living alone below poverty lines, having to interrupt their education, etc. According to the
U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), there were 24.2 births for every 1,000
adolescent females ages 15-19, or 249,078 babies born to females in this age group in 2014 and
nearly 89 percent of these births occurred outside of marriage. The Center for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) put forth that “the U.S. teen pregnancy rate is substantially higher than in other
theoretical rate of pregnant teens in Albuquerque that interrupted their education and suggest
Figure 1: Teenage
2014
Department of
Services
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Maimouna Issoufou Kapran
Methodology
I was hired by a division of the CDC called Adolescent Reproductive Health to establish an
approximate of the rate of pregnancy among UNM students and determine the percentage of those
who dropped out of school and/or interrupted their educational path, then make good
recommendation the solve the problem. To do so, my plan is to conduct a survey on campus and
in a grocery store and, using random sampling at the chosen location, I will ask students questions
1. Did you or anyone of your entourage had a baby between ages 15 and 19?
I chose to administer these survey questions in two different locations for two reasons. First, no
one knows more teens than teens themselves. By surveying the student population, my results will
be more precise. Second, I will survey customers in a grocery store because it is a public place that
everyone frequents. It will allow me to have results that are precise yet accurate to the whole
Results
First survey: I went to the SUB and randomly asked 20 students the questions stated above, then I
Second survey: I went to Smith’s grocery store and randomly asked 30 customers about their
experience with teen pregnancies. Then I reported the results in the same table as the first survey.
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Maimouna Issoufou Kapran
Finally, I combined both results obtained from different locations and came up with the estimated
percentage of teenagers that dropped out of school and did not go back to school.
Extract of Survey
Participant #3 (SUB): this participant said that her sister got pregnant when she was sixteen.
She dropped out of school and today she is about 25 years old, she has 2 babies and she
Participant #17 (SUB): this participant said that she got pregnant last year and she did not
drop out of school because she was due in June (she gave birth May 21st ), and since she
recovered well, she decided to pursue her education and came back to university while her
Participant #26 (Smith’s): this participant said that she gave birth to her first baby when
she was 18. She is a 46 years old stay-at-home mom and her husband mostly provides for
the family even though she has a little job on the side. She said that she does not feel the
need to go back to school today, even though she regrets not having a degree and a good
job.
Participant #39 (Smith’s): this participant is a 28-year-old mom of 2 children. She first had
a baby when she was 19 and eventually dropped out of college. She came back to pursue
her studies at Central New Mexico Community College just 1 year ago.
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Maimouna Issoufou Kapran
If yes, did the mother went back 3/6 3/6 2/9 7/9
to school?
As part of the process to further examine the results I obtained, I did some research about pregnant
teens that dropout of school and contrast the results. According to CDC, only about 50% of teen
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Maimouna Issoufou Kapran
reasons students
school
Insider
Figure 4: Teen
Pregnancy Affects
Graduation Rates
Inequality
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Maimouna Issoufou Kapran
Discussion of Results
From the survey conducted at UNM, the theoretical percentage of pregnant teens would be 35%.
More importantly, the percentage of pregnant teens that dropped out of school is 86% and the
percentage of teen moms that came back to pursue their education is 50%. These results show that
more than eighty percent of the teenagers that got pregnant dropped out of school and among these
students, half of them, deliberately or not, chose to interrupt their education and have not return
yet.
From the survey conducted at Smith’s, I determined that the theoretical percentage of pregnant
teens would be 30%. Moreover, the percentage of pregnant teenagers that dropped out of school
is 100% for this survey group and the percentage of those who did not come back to school is
approximately 78%. It means that more than half of the teenagers interrupted their studies and did
I did the average from both survey results to have an estimate of Albuquerque’s percentage of
student that interrupt their studies and found out that it is approximately 64%. Knowing that
Albuquerque’s population was 559,277 in 2016, that would make an estimation of 4,832 female
that interrupted her studies after being pregnant. Even though that is just an estimation if 3% of
the female population got pregnant (according to Figure 1), the numbers are still huge, and the
Subsequently, the results of this research are as follow: most of teenagers that got pregnant dropped
out of school and it is understandable knowing their situation. However, the problem resides in the
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Maimouna Issoufou Kapran
fact that an important number of these teenagers never come back to school to pursue their
education, with a higher trend when they dropped in high school than when they drop from college.
Provide teen moms with funds to go to school after giving birth because most of them don’t
do so because of the lack of money to take care of their child and pay tuition.
Provide child care centers on campus for teen moms’ children because if they cannot afford
babysitters and do not have anyone to look over their children, they will not be able to
attend classes.
Create more awareness programs to inform teenagers of importance of education, and more
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Maimouna Issoufou Kapran
Sources
Business insider
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-common-reasons-students-drop-out-of-high-school-
2015-10
https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm
Income Inequality
https://incomeinequality.wikispaces.com/Impact+on+families
https://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-development/reproductive-health-and-teen-
pregnancy/teen-pregnancy-and-childbearing/trends/index.html