Guttmacher Institute Press Release, 1/26/10

CALIFORNIA TEEN PREGNANCY RATES DECLINE MORE THAN 50% BETWEEN 1992 AND 2005

BUT FOLLOWING DECADE-LONG DECLINE, TEEN PREGNANCY RATE INCREASES NATIONALLY IN 2006 AS BOTH BIRTHS AND ABORTIONS RISE

In 2005, California’s overall teen pregnancy rates hit an all-time low, declining 52% between the 1992 peak (157 per 1,000 women aged 15–19) and 2005 (75 per 1,000). Both teen births and abortions also declined, with birth rates dropping 47% from 1992 (73 per 1,000) to 2005 (39 per 1,000) and abortion rates declining a whopping 66% between the 1988 peak (76 per 1,000) and 2005 (26 per 1,000). California’s progress in reducing teen pregnancy, birth and abortion far exceeds the national declines during the same period.

“California made tremendous strides in reducing teen pregnancy, birth and abortion,” says Elizabeth Nash, the Guttmacher Institute’s state policy expert. “This is not surprising, considering that California—the only state that never accepted federal abstinence-only dollars—has committed to providing teens with comprehensive sex education and access to the services they need to prevent pregnancy and protect their health.”

However, the more recent national picture is not as encouraging. New data from the Guttmacher Institute show that, for the first time in more than a decade, the nation’s teen pregnancy rate rose 3% in 2006, reflecting increases in teen birth and abortion rates of 4% and 1%, respectively. These new data are especially noteworthy since they provide the first documentation of what experts have suspected for several years, based on trends in teens’ contraceptive use—that the overall teen pregnancy rate would increase in the mid-2000s following steep declines in the 1990s and a subsequent plateau in the early 2000s. The significant drop in teen pregnancy rates in the 1990s was overwhelmingly the result of more and better use of contraceptives among sexually active teens. However, this decline started to stall out in the early 2000s, at the same time that sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence—and prohibited by law from discussing the benefits of contraception—became increasingly widespread and teens’ use of contraceptives declined.

“After more than a decade of progress, this reversal is deeply troubling,” says Heather Boonstra, Guttmacher Institute senior public policy associate. “It coincides with an increase in rigid abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which received major funding boosts under the Bush administration. A strong body of research shows that these programs do not work. Fortunately, the heyday of this failed experiment has come to an end with the enactment of a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative that ensures these programs will be age-appropriate, medically accurate and, most importantly, based on research demonstrating their effectiveness.”

The teen pregnancy rate declined 41% from its peak in 1990 (116.9 pregnancies per 1,000 women 15–19) to 2005 (69.5 per 1,000). Teen birth and abortion rates also declined, with births dropping 35% between 1991 and 2005 and teen abortions declining 56% from their peak in 1988 to 2005. But all three trends reversed in 2006. In that year, there were 71.5 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–19.  Put another way, about 7% of teen girls became pregnant in 2006.

Just as the long-term declines in teen pregnancy occurred among all racial and ethnic groups through 2005, the reversal in 2006 also involved all demographic groups:

• Among black teens, the pregnancy rate declined by 45% (from 223.8 per 1,000 in 1990 to 122.7 in 2005), before increasing to 126.3 in 2006.
• Among Hispanic teens, the pregnancy rate decreased by 26% (from 169.7 per 1,000 in 1992 to 124.9 in 2005), before rising to 126.6 in 2006.
• Among white non-Hispanic teens, the pregnancy rate declined 50% (from 86.6 per 1,000 in 1990 to 43.3 per 1,000 in 2005), before increasing to 44.0 in 2006.

Because the decline among black teens was so much greater than that among Hispanics, the long-standing gap between the two groups has disappeared. However, the gap between white teens and teens of color is as large as ever.

State-level data are not yet available for 2006, but varied widely in 2005. The highest pregnancy rates were in New Mexico (93 per 1,000 women 15–19), Nevada (90 per 1,000), Arizona (89 per 1,000), Texas (88 per 1,000) and Mississippi (85 per 1,000), and the lowest were in New Hampshire (33 per 1,000), Vermont (40 per 1,000), Maine (48 per 1,000), Minnesota (47 per 1,000) and North Dakota (46 per 1,000). Teen pregnancy rates declined in every state between 1988 and 2000, and every state except North Dakota between 2000 and 2005.

“It is too soon to tell whether the increase in the teen pregnancy rate between 2005 and 2006 is a short term fluctuation, a more lasting stabilization or the beginning of a significant new trend, any of which would be of great concern,” says Lawrence Finer, Guttmacher’s director of domestic research. “Either way, it is clearly time to redouble our efforts to make sure our young people have the information, interpersonal skills and health services they need to prevent unwanted pregnancies and to become sexually healthy adults..”

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The Guttmacher Institute—www.guttmacher.org—advances sexual and reproductive health worldwide through research, policy analysis and public education.