Policy Perspectives : Understanding U.S. Births and Abortions with Google Trends

This study investigates the relationship between abstinence-only education and various reproductive health outcomes using descriptive statistics and Poisson regression models, while incorporating Google search data to capture the unknown factors associated with people's information-seeking patterns. Data included total births, abortions, teen births, and teen abortions for all fifty states in the United States over nine years. Our primary analysis involved Poisson regression models controlling for year and state fixed effects. Results indicated that abstinence-only education was associated with a decrease in teen births and total births, but an increase in teen abortions, with no significant relationship found with total abortions. Google search data analysis suggested significant associations between search terms and reproductive health outcomes, providing valuable insights into the potential impact of abstinence-only education on reproductive health. This study emphasizes the importance of comprehensive sex education and access to reliable information in promoting better reproductive health outcomes among teens, highlighting the need for further exploration of the relationship between online search behavior, abstinence-only education, and reproductive health outcomes