Kansas City Star: Teen birth rate hits record low
As the nation continued to struggle in the recession in 2009, the rate at which U.S. women are having babies continued to fall, pushing the teen birth rate to a record low, federal officials reported Tuesday.
The birth rate among U.S. girls aged 15 to 19 fell to 39.1 births per 1,000 teens in 2009, the most recent year for which statistics are available. That's a 6 percent drop from 2008 and the lowest rate ever recorded in the nearly 70 years that the federal government has been collecting reliable data, according to a preliminary analysis of data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
"The decline in teen births is really quite amazing," said Brady E. Hamilton, who helped perform the analysis.
The drop marked the second year in a row the birth rate among teens fell, meaning it has dropped for 16 out of the past 18 years. The 8 percent two-year decline strengthens the belief that a two-year increase during the preceding two years was an aberration.
"Just in time for the holidays, a steep decline in teen birth has been announced," said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies. "We now are, thankfully, back on track."
The reason for the record low remains unclear, but some experts attributed the two-year decline to the recession, noting that the overall fertility rate as well as the total number of births in the United States declined the second straight year in 2009 as well. ...
Given what I see personally at our local high school, I was shocked to read this information. Of course, my immediate neighbor has two teen daughters that both graduated high school with babies in tow. Instead of teen parties, I see they host play groups, with all their teen mom friends. It's an object lesson for my own kids.
Posted by: njstifter | Dec 30, 2010 at 06:52 PM