When the British don’t talk about sex…

As I was driving in to work today, I was listening to Episode 26 of Trending with Don and Timmerie.

One of the news items being discussed by the hosts referred to my country of origin and I thought it would be worth briefly sharing here. The news item in question referred to a study by David Paton and Liam Wright and published in the Journal of Health Economics.

Back in the 1990s, Britain had some of the highest teen pregnancy rates, so the government responded with a rigorous sex education plan costing four hundred and fifty-four million pounds. The plan was implemented, free contraception was handed out… but it it did little to reduce the occurrences of teen pregnancy.

However, in 2008 things changed. Due to the economic downturn, the funding for the sex education initiatives were cut. Some of the schools chose to continue the programmes, while others dropped them due to lack of funding. It might surprise some to find out that in the geographical areas where the programmes no longer functioned, there was a distinct drop in the number of teenage pregnancies and abortions (up to 40%), while it was business-as-usual in the areas where the programmes continued.

Perhaps contraception isn’t the panacea we were promised…