Teen Birth Rate Hits All-Time Low, Led by 50 Percent Decline Among Hispanics and Blacks
Ariana Eunjung Cha
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
April 28, 2016
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. But most experts agree on the two major causes.
The first is the most important and 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 that can last years 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 and acting only on hormones — 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 OK,” 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 ones. While there’s not good data on why this is happening, she thinks of it as a “contagion” factor. So many teens are waiting to have sex, she suggests, that the peer pressure goes the opposite way than it might have in the past.
“We think this is a very healthy trend,” Gomez-Lobo said.
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