Study ties low access to birth control among poor to unplanned pregnancies

Poor women are five times as likely as affluent women to have an unintended birth, new research from the Brookings Institution shows — and that drives inequality.

The difference boils down to contraceptive use, not sexual activity. There is no “sex gap” by income, researchers emphasized. Promiscuity doesn’t vary along class lines. Access to the most reliable forms of birth control, however, does.

The Brookings study examined fertility outcomes of 3,885 single women, none of whom were trying to get pregnant. Those with incomes below the poverty line were twice as likely to have sex without protection as those with incomes four times the poverty line, data from the National Survey of Family Growth showed.

The failure rate for progestin-releasing IUDs, for example, which can cost up to $1,000, is 0.08 percent, according to the CDC. The failure rate for condoms: 12 percent.

“In a sense, inequality starts before birth,” said co-author Richard Reeves, policy director of the Center on Children and Families. “An important part of the policy story is helping parents have children when they’re ready. The life chances of those children will be better as a result.”

The average American woman is sexually active for 10 years before getting married, Reeves noted. Preaching abstinence is not a realistic approach to reducing unplanned pregnancies.

Nine percent of women with incomes at or below the poverty line reported having a pregnancy in the past year, the National Survey of Family Growth data showed, compared to only 3 percent of women in the top income bracket.

The economic argument for more widely available birth control: Unintended pregnancies cost taxpayers $21 billion each year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit health organization. That averages out to a cost of about $366 per every woman of childbearing age in the U.S., The

Post’s Chris Ingraham reported. “The passage of the Affordable Care Act represents a huge advance here, by making better contraception more financially accessible,” the study said.

Wealthier women who face unplanned pregnancies were also far more likely to have abortions. Thirty-two percent of those surveyed in the highest income bracket had an abortion in the past year, compared to 9 percent of poor pregnant women.

Researchers reported a financial barrier to safe procedures is the primary deterrent. Equalizing abortion rates could reduce the unintended birth ratio by a third.