Lots of claims have been made for the casual link between teenage pregnancy and welfare benefits however - lets consider some facts as well as opinions based on more evidence than 'Scrounger' headlines.

Denmark pays out higher benefits even than Britain, at £5,116 a year but single mothers make up only 2.9 per cent of households.(2006 figures),

The United States however has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the industrialized world.

This despite according to figures compiled from Virginian state officials last year, a girl with a baby could qualify for slightly more than $10,000 a year in child support, welfare and food stamps, and other benefits also may be available.
But $10,000 is only about half the income needed to be self-sufficient locally, according to the state.
It was also pointed out that governmental assistance programs generally do not last more than five years, since they were intended to help people in tough times, not to support families long-term.

Valerie Hicks. the director of Kidz Health 2020 a group working in a deprived Cleveland neighbourhood with a high rate of unmarried teen pregnancies observed

'It almost has become a rite of passage. If your signal into adulthood is not your acquisition of an education or the acquisition of a job, then the signal of your transition into adulthood may become the baby.'

A spokesman for the Tories Philip Hammond said:
"We have to be careful with this claim of a causal link.
When we are giving benefit to the single mother, we are not giving it to her, it's to the child. if you want to end child poverty, then you have to give benefit."


Some facts -

There are 1.8 million one-parent families in Britain and they care for nearly 3 million children. About nine out of ten lone parents are women. The median age for a lone parent is 35,
AND
at any one time only 3 per cent of lone mothers are teenagers

The belief held in some circles that teenagers only get pregnant to get a council house is not backed by facts.
Seven out of ten 15 and 16 year old mothers, and around half of 17 and 18-year-old mothers, stay in the family home (figures from the YWCA)

Forty two per cent of all poor children live in one parent families. One third (33 per cent) of one parent families live on gross incomes of £200 a week or less. This compares with 3 per cent of married couples, and 10 per cent of cohabiting couples (Gingerbread figures from end 2007)