From the President

Teen pregnancy. You may have read recently that teen pregnancy rates in the United States have been going down and are now at all-time lows. That is absolutely true. However, it is more important to recognize that teen pregnancy and birth rates in the U.S. are still, by a wide margin, the highest in the industrialized world.

I thought that when we did our Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card this year, it would be different. That somehow, births to teens would not show such a major impact on the quality of life of kids in our cities. I was wrong. In spite of the progress of the past decade, births to teens continues to be as closely correlated to our city rankings of kid-friendliness as any other indicator.

Population Connection believes we should put the welfare of children above partisan politics and the health of children and their mothers before political ideology. That is what our work is about.

Unfortunately, the political ideology favored by our current administration—which pushes abstinence-only sex education, denies our young people the information they need to make informed personal choices, and prompted the recent decision by the Food and Drug Administration to block emergency contraception from being available over-the-counter—will almost certainly lead to higher teen-pregnancy rates, more unwanted births to teens, and more abortions. Our report sheds light on these issues. It also highlights the ways in which population growth impacts all our lives.

Population growth. It simultaneously crowds us together and pushes us apart. We complain that we’re jammed together and congested—yet, at the same time, we often don’t know any of our neighbors. These two things—crowding and alienation—are the most striking examples of how population growth impacts everyone. And those who are most negatively effected by population growth are the truly vulnerable—our children.

For years, Population Connection has published the Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card, reporting on the quality of life of children in our cities. We don’t do this report to tell people how to find a more kid-friendly city. Rather, we do the report to point out that each of us can help make our own community more kid-friendly.

We know that not everything is a population issue, but a surprising amount of things are: teen pregnancy, public health, education, sprawl, responsive government, and so on. Each of us can—and must—do what we can to improve the quality of life where we live. Our Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card does not have all the answers, but it raises some troubling questions. It is a good place to start.

Peter H. Kostmayer
President

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