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No I will not in this write up echo valid economic analysis already much harped upon. I will merely try and shift the public’s gaze to the British government’s failure in its attempts at reducing high-risk behaviour as a timely warning for our country to avoid repeating such costly mistakes. Economists at Nottingham University, notably Professor David Paton, the author of a recent study, sates that parallels can be drawn between other fields economists have studied where incentives matter. To quote: “When you introduce policies that seem ‘obvious’, it is important to factor in the possibility that the policies may actually cause people to change how they behave”. As a science, economics studies what can and is replicable. “Teenage sexual behaviour appears to be little different to other fields that economists have studied in at least one important respect: incentives matter to teenagers too” affirms Professor Paton.
“In this case, it appears that some measures (introduced) aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy rates induced changes in teenage behaviour that were large enough not only to negate the intended impact on conceptions, but to have an adverse impact on another important area of sexual health – sexually transmitted infections.”
The (British) government had assumed, Professor Paton said, that adolescent sexual activity was the outcome of random decisions. His findings suggested that adolescents think rationally about the decision to become sexually active. Therefore, when the cost of birth control declines, its use increases. This was found to hold both for adolescents who were previously having sex and not using birth control and also for adolescents who were previously not indulging in such activity.
This interpretation is underlined by Professor Paton’s data on the morning-after pill. Areas where the pill was made available for free had seen no reduction in teenage pregnancy rates, but sexually transmitted infections rates had increased.
The British government, and not it alone, had hailed falling teenage pregnancy levels on its ‘safe sex’ campaigns. But March figures showed that after three years of decline, the number of youths becoming pregnant increased by 2.2 per cent to 41,868 in the year 2001 to 2002. Hopefully this costly mistake will be kept in mind by those who might think of emulating the British in their sexual permissiveness.
Joe Bonett, Balzan
St Julians
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