A Spatial Analysis of Township-Level Characteristics and Teenage Birth Rates in Taiwan

Teenage birth has been a major public health issue in the past decades. Although the teenage birth rates in Taiwan have been decreasing due to the improvement of education and economic environment, teenage birth rates vary greatly by township. Possible reasons include inequality of economic development and health service provision and different composition of population characteristics in different townships. For example, some townships in the eastern part of Taiwan or the townships with a higher percentage of aborigines show a ten times higher rate of teenage birth than the average rate in Taiwan. This study uses an ecological study design. Data come from the 2005 and 2013 Taiwan Demography, The City and County Statistics, and Census. The study sample includes 368 townships per year. The outcome is the 15-19 age-specific birth rates. This study also includes the 20-24 age specific birth rates as the comparison. The independent variables include population density, the percentage of aborigines, the percentage of people over 65 years old, divorce rates, the percentage of people with college degrees, the number of physicians per 10,000 people, social welfare spending, and residential mobility. This study will use Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) to examine the geographic concentrations of teenage births and use a Spatial Lag Regression Analysis to examine whether geographic concentrations of teenage birth rates still exist after considering social-environmental and health services factors. In other words, this study intends to investigate whether the geographic concentrations of teenage birth rates were the spillover effects of surrounding areas. All of the analyses will be conducted separately by outcome and year.