The 1990s have brought good news: both teen pregnancy and teen birth rates have declined nationwide, in all states, and among all age and racial/ethnic groups - led by both less sexual activity and better contraceptive use. As a nation, we deserve to be proud of these encouraging trends. But even limited success can have a downside if it means that the public and the media begin to believe that the teen pregnancy problem has been solved.

The most important challenge we face now is to keep from becoming complacent about teen pregnancy and childbearing - and here's why:

• Teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. remain much too high. Despite the recently declining rates, thirty-one percent of teenage girls get pregnant at least once before they reach age 20, resulting in 750,000 teen pregnancies a year.^{1, 2}

• The U.S. still leads the industrialized world in teen pregnancy and birth rates - by a wide margin. In fact, the U.S. rates are double, triple, even ten times those of other western countries, which puts us at a terrible competitive disadvantage in the global economy.³

• Teen pregnancy costs society billions of dollars a year. There are nearly half a million children born to teen mothers each year. Most of these mothers are unmarried, and many will end up poor and on welfare. Each year the federal government alone spends about $9 billion to help families that began with a teenage birth.⁴

• Teen pregnancy hurts the business community's "bottom line." Too many children start school unprepared to learn, and teachers are overwhelmed trying to deal with problems that start in the home. Forty-five percent of first births in the United States are to women who are either unmarried, teenagers, or lacking a high school degree, which means that too many children - tomorrow's workers - are born into families that are not prepared to help them succeed.³ In addition, teen mothers often do not finish high school themselves. It's not easy for a teen to learn work skills and be a dependable employee while caring for children.

• Preventing teen pregnancy is a cost-effective way to reduce child poverty. Children should be born to adults who are ready and able to nurture them. Research is clear that children of teen parents have more health problems, do more poorly in school, and are more likely to end up in prison or on welfare than children born to older parents. By preventing children from having children, we can address many vexing social. problems, including the persistent cycle of poverty that comes from generations of teen childbearing.

• A new crop of kids becomes teenagers each year. This means that prevention efforts must be constantly renewed and reinvented. And between 1995 and 2010, the number of girls aged 15-19 is projected to increase by 2.2 million.³

• Teen pregnancy is still a big problem for many communities. Although rates have come down overall, certain sub-populations, defined by geography, age, and racial or ethnic group, still have very high rates. For example, in some states, the teen pregnancy problem has gotten worse in certain urban or rural communities.⁵ The Hispanic/Latino community, the fastest growing ethnic group in the nation, now has the highest teen birth rate.⁶

• Underlying trends behind the declines may change. The U.S. has enjoyed a healthy and growing economy in the 1990s, and opportunities for jobs may have motivated teens to avoid pregnancy. What happens when the nation experiences an economic downturn? And while new treatments for HIV/AIDS are certainly great news, less fear among teens about potentially deadly consequences of sex may lead them to reverse the recent trends of less sexual activity and better contraceptive use.

• Declining teen pregnancy rates means we can make a difference. Rather than making us complacent, the recent good news should encourage us to do more to continue the current trends. The hard truth is that yesterday's good news about declining teen pregnancy and birth rates won't mean much to the boys and girls who turn 13 next year. For them, we must redouble our efforts to make sure that they benefit from the successes that their older brothers and sisters have begun to see.

About the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
The mission of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy is to improve the life prospects of this generation and the next by influencing cultural values and building a more effective grassroots movement. The Campaign's goal is to reduce the teen pregnancy rate by one-third by 2016.

Sources


1. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (2006). Factsheet: How is the 3 in 10 statistic calculated? Washington, DC: Author.
2. The Guttmacher Institute. (2006). U.S. Teenage Pregnancy Statistics, National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity . New York: The Guttmacher Institute.
3. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. (1997). Whatever Happened to Childhood? The Problem of Teen Pregnancy in the United States. Washington, DC: Author.
4. Hoffman, S. (2006). By the Numbers: the Public Costs of Teen Childbearing. Washington, DC: National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
5. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. (1999). State by State Information. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy website (www.teenpregnancy.org/america/states/default.asp).
6. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. (2006). Fact Sheet: Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing Among Latinos in the United States. Washington, DC: Author.

The "What If?" Project
(2005)

By the Numbers: the Public Costs of Teen Childbearing
(2006)