Kids Count Alaska 1997

Abstract

From 1991 through 1995, nearly 55,400 babies were born in Alaska. The overwhelming majority (89 percent) were born to mothers at least 20 years old. But that still leaves more than 6,000 babies born to teenage mothers during the first half of the 1990s. And more than a third of those babies were born to mothers under 18 years old. Teenage mothers and their children face economic disadvantages (see Births to Teens indicator), but they also face health risks. Half the youngest mothers (15 and under) and nearly four in ten older teenagers get inadequate prenatal care. Even among mothers over 20, one-quarter don’t get adequate prenatal care.About 68 percent of women who had babies in Alaska from 1991 through 1995 were White, 23 percent were Native, 4.5 percent were Black, and 4.5 percent were Asian. One quarter of mothers of all races in Alaska get inadequate prenatal care, but the share is considerably higher among Alaska Native mothers—four in ten.