Thursday, April 7, 2011

FAST AND LOOSE, TWIST AND SHOUT

While I was scouring the net for data on teenage pregnancies, I stumbled across this article in the Likhaan website,
http://www.likhaan.org/content/alarming-rise-teenage-pregnancies-noted
which references a three-year old article by one Marlon Ramos of the Phil Inquirer.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20080227-121434/Alarming-rise-in-teenage-pregnancies-noted
The title of the piece is "Alarming rise in teenage pregnancies noted".

Here is a partial quote:

/
'[Forum for Family Planning and Development Inc. (FFPDI)] [president Benjamin]
de Leon said the latest data from the National Statistics Office showed that of 1.7 million babies born in 2004, almost 8 percent were born to mothers aged 15-19. Almost 30 percent of Filipino women become mothers before reaching their 21st birthday, he said.
In 2000 alone, young mothers gave birth to 818,000 babies, he said.
“This means that almost one of every 10 babies is born to a teenage mothers,” he said.'
/

Apparently, the above data was derived from a special report by NSO on "Live Birth Statistics" for 2004.
http://www.census.gov.ph/data/sectordata/sr08321tx.html
While the NSO report says "The number of births born to teenage mothers was at 7.9...", the above article rephrased it at "almost 8 percent..born to mothers aged 15-19". Well, I am not about to quibble with a difference of 0.1 percent. So be it. So 7.9% of 1.7 million babies in 2004 would amount to 135,429 - as NSO stated. However the Inquirer article says that in 2000, young mothers gave birth to a whopping 818,000 babies! Much as I tried to, I couldn't find the source of that figure anywhere on earth. If 135,429 babies were born to young mothers in 2004, how could it be possible that 818,000 babies were likewise born to young mothers in 2000? That is a huge difference of 682,571 babies! While I understand the meaning of statistical significance, over half a million babies couldn't be statistically insignificant. The figure is a statistical outrage. Where on earth did he get that data. The actual and official NSO report for 2000 says 7.1% or 126,025.
http://www.census.gov.ph/data/sectordata/sr0364tx.html

And here's the clincher: "one of every 10 babies is born to a teenage mothers".
Hmm, while I could statistically tolerate 7.9% being rounded to 8%, 7.1% rounded at 10% is just too much "tongpats". For if that were true, the figure as (stated above) of 818,000 being 10% of births only means that 8,180,000 (!) births occurred in the year 2000.
I might as well claim that pigs just flew out of my ears.
Again, again. Who's spreading malicious disinformation? Booo!

1 comment:

Manny said...

Looks like Likhaan and FFPDI are playing fast and loose with the numbers. That seems to be quite a habit among those who are trying to push for the passage of the RH/abortion bill.

It's about time we call them to account for their deceptive practices!