This study used parental investment theory to identify predictors of teen pregnancy rates for Blacks and Whites for 41 U.S. states for which data were available for 1995. Regression models were built that predicted Black teen births, White teen births, and both together using indices of parental investment (unemployment, prison incarceration rates, poverty, marital opportunity for women as indexed by gender ratios) and controlling for economic development (urbanization, infant mortality rates). White teen births increased with state poverty rates and incarceration rates and decreased with marital opportunity for teens. Black teen births increased with incarceration rates and decreased with marital opportunity. In the joint model, all measures of parental investment predicted teen births, and they explained all of the Black and White differences therein. Early reproduction and its variation across states and racial groups can be seen as an adaptive response to diminished prospects for parental investment.
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