US teen birth rate falls to record low – study

The 2009 US teen birth rate hit its lowest level since data on teen childbearing began being gathered nearly 70 years ago, according to a report.

The rate in 2009 was 39.1 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19, or 59 per cent lower than the high of 96.3 births per 1,000 recorded in 1957, says the report by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The birth rate for young teens, aged 15-17, showed its biggest single-year decline between 2008 and 2009, falling by seven per cent.

In number terms, teen births fell to 409,840, the fewest since 1946 and 36 percent fewer than the historic high in 1970, when 644,708 teen girls had babies. In more good news, the birth rate for 10- to 14-year-olds also fell to a record low 0.5 births per 1,000 girls, the report said.

But the US teen birth rate still remains the highest among industrialized countries, the report says.

Birth rates dropped for teenage girls of all races and ethnicities, with Hispanic girls showing the biggest single-year decline for all groups.

Hispanic teen girls’ births rate dropped by 11 per cent between 2008 and 2009 to reach the lowest rate for the group in the two decades since data have been available for Latinas.

Teen childbearing has long raised concerns among health officials and policy makers for several reasons, including that babies born to teens are more likely to be underweight or preterm than infants born to older women, and are more likely to die during infancy, the report says.