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Teen Pregnancy Rates Rise Slightly


Teen Pregnancy Rates Rise Slightly
For the first time since 1990, teen pregnancy rose roughly 3 percent from 2005 to 2006. This increase spanned racial demographics and coincided with increases in both teen birth rates (up 4 percent) and abortions (up 1 percent). Recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group formerly affiliated with Planned Parenthood, determined that, in 2006, roughly 7 percent (743,000 total pregnancies) of girls in the United States under the age of 20 became pregnant. 
In the United States, teen pregnancy dropped 41 percent between its peak in 1990 (116.9 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-19) and 2005 when it reached 69.5 pregnancies per 1,000. Between 1991 and 2006, teen births dropped 35 percent, and teen abortion fell 56 percent from its peak in 1988 to 2005. From 1986 to 2006 the number of teen pregnancies ending in abortion dropped by almost one-third, from 46 percent to 32 percent. The rise in numbers, depicted in the Guttmacher report, may be the beginning of an upward trend or it may be simply a blip on the timeline.
Teen pregnancy can have long-reaching consequences far beyond the changed lives, lost innocence, health risks, and family dynamics. Teen mothers often are dependent on welfare after their child’s birth, are more likely to have a second teen pregnancy, and are likely to drop out of school – although studies have shown that many of them were struggling academically prior to becoming pregnant. 
A March 2009 Child Trends research brief calculated the cost of teen pregnancy. It indicated that children born to teenagers are often premature and suffer from low birth weights. These children are at risk academically, often become teen parents themselves and, on average, a higher percentage of boys born to teen girls spend time in prison. The teen parent often never graduates from high school, is more likely to receive welfare and live in poverty, and is less likely to marry by age 35. In 2004, the total public cost of teen pregnancy – resulting from medical care, child welfare, incarceration, and lost tax revenue – was $9.2 billion annually.
Child Trends recently examined the risk of teen mothers not obtaining a diploma or GED. They found that, while 89 percent of those who had not given birth in their teens had earned a diploma by age 22, only 51 percent of teen mothers had. Further, those who had a child before age 18 were less likely to receive a diploma or a GED than older teen mothers.  Those teens who did complete high school after becoming a mother were slightly more likely to earn a GED instead of a diploma.
Guttmacher reported that the gap in pregnancy rates between blacks and Hispanics had closed, but the rates of both groups remain higher than that of non-Hispanic whites. Child Trends found that in spite of this, black teen mothers were more likely than Hispanic or white teen mothers to earn a diploma or GED by age 22. Sixty-seven percent of black women earned a diploma or GED compared to 55 percent of the teen white mothers and 46 percent of the Hispanic women. 
This failure for teen mothers to complete their educations results in numerous negative consequences for them and their child. Earning a diploma or GED reduces the mother’s risk of a subsequent teen pregnancy. Failure to obtain a high school education significantly limits a teen’s opportunities in the job market. A parent’s higher educational achievement improves their child’s behavioral and cognitive outcomes during the pre-teen and early teen years, and reduces the risk of the child repeating early sexual activity and the cycle of teen pregnancy.
The implications of teen pregnancy have long been mired in politics and money. In the 1980’s, sex education was almost entirely safe sex or pro-condom education, based on the faulty premise that everyone – including teens – was sexually active. Schools taught students about risk avoidance and contraceptives. With the 1996 federal welfare act, government funding was made available to teach abstinence-only programs, which taught teens to wait until they were older and married before becoming sexually active. While comprehensive sex education still raked in the lion’s share of public money, a few struggling abstinence programs began to operate, competing for government dollars.  Even now, proponents of comprehensive sex education are blaming abstinence for the rising pregnancy rates, and Valerie Huber of the National Association for Abstinence Education told USA Today, "To me, it appears to be another opportunity to throw a barb at abstinence education.”
In a culture that glamorizes sexuality – in media, in advertising, and in the public square, teens are caught between parents and peers and schools – each side playing a part in shaping the opinion of impressionable children who are often unprepared to tackle the issues of pregnancy, parenthood, and sexually transmitted disease. Meanwhile, teens are being sold a false bill of goods – that sexual activity can be safe outside the confines of a truly committed relationship. Most parents prefer that their children be taught abstinence, and it behooves them to determine and enforce the messages their children hear about sexuality – in the home and in school. 
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