Less sex, more birth control cut teen birthrate to all-time low in '13

Thursday, August 21, 2014

The birthrate for American teens hit an all-time low in 2013, and government statisticians attribute the decline to a reduction in teenage sexual activity and more widespread use of birth control among those who are having sex.

Preliminary birth-certificate data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 277,749 babies were born in 2013 to mothers who were under the age of 20. That is the lowest figure for any year going back to 1940, when there were there were 304,004 births, according to a report released Wednesday by researchers in the CDC's Vital Statistics Division.

Among the 15- to 19-year-olds who accounted for nearly all teen births, the preliminary birthrate of 26.6 per 1,000 was 9.5 percent lower than it was in 2012.

All 50 states plus the District of Columbia recorded statistically significant declines in the teen birthrate between 1991 and 2012, according to the report. The size of these drops ranged from 24 percent in West Virginia to 65 percent in Washington, D.C. Overall, it was 52 percent.

The overall teen birthrate has plunged 72 percent since its all-time high in 1957, when there were 96.3 births per 1,000 teen girls and women. The total number of teen births peaked in 1970, at 644,708.

One thing that has been on the rise is the proportion of teen births to unmarried mothers. Only about 2 percent of American teens were married in 2013; as a result, 89 percent of teen births that year were to single mothers. That's up from 48 percent in 1980, and 14 percent in 1940, according to the report.

A 23 percent jump in the teen birthrate between 1986 and 1991 prompted a flurry of initiatives to promote abstinence and the use of birth control, and they're working, the CDC researchers wrote.

According to data from the CDC's National Survey of Family Growth, the proportion of teen girls and women who are "sexually experienced" has been falling for 20 years, the report authors noted.

The survey also found that more teens who are having sex are using some form of birth control.

A Section on 08/21/2014