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All Boats Not Rising
Gap widens between rich, poor in state; teen births cited
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Business New Haven
9/4/2000
By: M.C.B.
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While Connecticut maintained its No. 1 nation ranking in per-capita income during 1999, the gulf between rich and poor in the state continued to grow.
According to figures from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, per-capita income in the Nutmeg State was 37.3 percent above the national average in 1999 - about the same lead the state enjoyed in 1998. In 1991, during the depths of the recession, the state's lead stood at “only” 33.7 percent, according to the most recent Connecticut Economy, a quarterly review of the University of Connecticut.
That's the good news. Over the same period, however, the state's poverty rate rose from 8.1 percent in 1990-92 to 9.9 percent in 1996-98 (the most recent data available). Over the same period, the national rate declined from 14.2 percent to 13.2 percent.
Why has poverty worsened in Connecticut during economic boom times? One possible answer, according to the UConn quarterly, has to do with births to unwed mothers, especially teenagers.
Children born to mothers who graduate high school, marry and give birth after age 20 are ten times less likely to be poor than children born to mothers who fail to do those things. In addition, those in the latter group face a higher incidence of health risks such as low birth weight, premature delivery and first-year mortality.
And while birth rates among Connecticut teenagers - four of five teenage mothers are unmarried - actually fell during the 1990s, they did so at a much lower rate than the national average, according to UConn.
Connecticut's teen rate in 1998 was 36 births per 1,000 female teenagers, representing an 11-percent decline from the 1991 rate of 40 births per 1,000.
However, the national rate 51 per 1,000 in 1998 was 18 percent below the 1991 rate of 62 births per 1,000. Connecticut's slower-than-average decline in teen births (only Arkansas and Rhode Island posted a smaller decline over the same period), according to the UConn study, may help explain why the state lagged the nation in alleviating poverty during the decade.
Moreover, according to UConn, there are substantial differences in childbearing patterns across demographic lines.
Non-Hispanic white female teens produced 17 births per 1,000 population in 1998, less than half the national average of 35 for this group. Only two states had a lower birth rate.
Black teenage females had a 1998 rate of 77 births per 1,000 - nine percent below the national average, but more than four times the rate among white teens.
Also in 1998, Hispanic teens in Connecticut posted a birth rate of 118 per 1,000 - 26 percent above the national average and more than seven times the rate among whites.
While trends in births to unwed mothers illuminate only part of the poverty picture in Connecticut and elsewhere, the UConn quarterly notes, “On average the odds are still stacked against children born to unmarried mothers, particularly teenage mothers.”
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