Utah youth population, teen pregnancy climbing

Utah's 18 and under population is booming and their poverty level is showing a slight improvement, but the teen-pregnancy rate continues at its nation-leading pace, an annual report by Voices for Utah Children shows.

The slim reduction in the number of kids in families living at or below the federal poverty line is likely offset by an increase in the number of families who have slipped into that category because of lost jobs or other financial stresses due to the widespread calamity of the current economy, the 2009 Kids Count data book shows.

The number of unemployed Utah adults rose to 70,417 in February 2009 from 45,000 in February 2008. It's a condition reflected in the number of people on U.S. food stamps — 72,700 this February compared to 55,900 in February 2008, according to the report.

The report is based on an annual survey and is intended to provide citizens, advocates, community leaders and policymakers a real-world measure of how children are doing and if efforts to improve the health and well-being of Utah kids are working.

Nearly a third of Utah schoolchildren are receiving free or reduced-price lunches, based on their family's income, and the report's authors suspect more are eligible but have not applied for them.

Families falling under the federal poverty line, which is based solely on the price of food and is $22,050 annual income for a family of four, is hardly the whole story for Utah children, said Terry Haven, Kids Count director for Voices for Utah Children and author of "Measures of Child Well-Being in Utah: What's Around the Corner for Kids?"

The clearest sign of what's around the corner for kids in Utah is there's going to be a lot more of them, Haven said. The U.S. Census Bureau, as well as state Department of Health statistics, indicate that the average number of children in Utah between 2005 and 2007 was 794,549. Projections indicate that by 2010, the number will be 818,985, while more than 1 million of Utah's residents in 2030 will be 18 or under.

Most of the indicators of child well-being show very little change year to year, Haven said.

Notable this year, however, are two troubling trends: Teen birth rates climbed for the third year in a row, and sexually transmitted diseases are soaring.

The teen birth rate went from 14.8 per 1,000 teens in 2004 to 18.6 in 2007, a 26 percent increase. The trend is troubling for a number of reasons, Haven said, the main one being that children born to teen mothers are more likely to have poor health, experience learning problems, live in poverty and go on to become teen mothers themselves.