The birth rate among American teenagers, at crisis levels in the 1990s, has fallen to an all-time low, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The decline of the past decade has occurred in all regions in the country and among all races. But the most radical changes have been among Hispanic and black teens, whose birth rates have dropped nearly 50 percent since 2006.
Theories on the reasons for the dramatic shift include everything from new approaches to sex education to the widespread availability of broadband Internet (more on this later). But most experts agree on the two major causes.
The first may be obvious: Today's teens enjoy better access to contraception and more convenient contraception than their predecessors, and more of them are taking advantage of innovations like long-acting injectable and implantable methods over a daily birth control pill. But the second cause is something that goes against the conventional wisdom. It's that teens -- despite their portrayal in popular TV and movies as uninhibited, hormone-filled crazies -- are having less sex.
"There has been a change in social norms that has happened in the past 20 years, and the idea of not having sex or delaying sex is now something that can be okay," said Bill Albert, chief program officer for the National Campaign To Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Veronica Gomez-Lobo, director of pediatric gynecology at Children’s National Medical Center, said the trend of abstinence has been mostly among younger teens rather than older teens. While she said that there isn’t good data on why this is happening she thinks of it as a “contagion” issue where so many teens are waiting to sex that the peer pressure goes the opposite way than it might have in the past.
“We think this is a very healthy trend,” she said.
The teen birth rate in the United States peaked in 1991. It was a time when posters of sad young moms were plastered all over subway stations and popular culture was filled with references to "babies having babies." The alarm was due to the fact that having unplanned children at a young age has been shown to have numerous negative health and social consequences. Studies estimate that the problem costs U.S. taxpayers an estimated $9 billion each year.
From 1991 to 2014 the birth rate declined 60 percent from 61.8 to 24.2 births per 1,000 -- the lowest rate on record. As birth rates began to decline about a decade ago various surveys and studies have tried to quantify the impact of various interventions and other possible reasons.
One of the most interesting factors studied has been the popularity of MTV's hit reality show "16 and Pregnant." A study that came out in 2014 estimated that there was a 6 percent reduction in teen births in the 18 months following the first broadcasts. Another intriguing study, by Melanie Guldi from the University of Central Florida and Chris Herbst from Arizona State University, looked at the impact of the Internet and estimated that at least 13% of the total decline between 1999 and 2007 can be explained by the increasing availability of broadband Internet. They theorized that being online could help provide teens other means of exploring relationships and find advice about effective forms of contraception in addition to researching options for terminating unwanted pregnancies.
But while the overall national trend is positive, large racial and ethnic, regional and socioeconomic disparities remain. The birth rates for Hispanic and black teens, while lower than in the past, still are twice as high as that of white teens. In some states, the difference is three times higher.
In addition, some counties still have pockets of high birth rates -- even in states with overall low birth rates -- and many of them are clustered in the south and southwest. The CDC analysis of teens ages 15 to 19 also noted that the places with the highest birth rates tend to have higher unemployment, lower income and less education.
“The United States has made remarkable progress in reducing both teen pregnancy and racial and ethnic differences, but the reality is, too many American teens are still having babies,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement.
By: Ariana Eunjung Cha (Washington Post).
Photo: Dayna Smith (Washington Post).
Review: Emerging Market Formulations &
Research Unit, Flagship Records.
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