Teenage pregnancy in the United States

Teenage pregnancy in the United States relates to girls under the age of 20 who become pregnant. Most occurrences take place out-of-wedlock.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 4 out of 5, 80%, of teenage pregnancies are unintended. In 2010, of the majority of pregnancies to adolescent females in the United States, an estimated 60% ended in live birth, 15% ended in miscarriage, and 30% in abortion. In 2012, there were 104,700 maternal hospital stays for pregnant teens; the number of hospital stays for teen pregnancies decreased by 47 percent from 2000-2012.

In 2014, 249,078 babies were born to women aged 15 – 19 years old. This is a birth rate of 24.2 per 1000 women. Pregnancies are much less common among girls younger than 15. In 2008, 6.6 pregnancies occurred per 1,000 teens aged 13–14. In other words, fewer than 1% of teens younger than 15 became pregnant in 2008.

Teen pregnancy is defined as pregnancies in women under the age of 20, regardless of marital status. Teen pregnancy rates have dropped 9% since 2013. Between 1991 and 2014, teenage birth rates dropped 61% nationwide.

Teenage birth rates, as opposed to pregnancies, peaked in 1991, when there were 61.8 births per 1,000 teens, and the rate dropped in 17 of the 19 years that followed. 3 in 10 American girls will get pregnant before age 20. That is almost 750,000 pregnancies a year. Nearly 89% of teenage births occur outside of marriage. Of all women, 16% will be teen mothers. The largest increases in unintended pregnancies were found among women who were cohabiting, had lower education, and low income.

Black, Latina, and American Indian youth experience the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and childbirth. Studies show that whites (43 per 1,000) and Asians (23 per 1,000) have the lowest rate of pregnancy before the age of 20. The pregnancy rate among black teens decreased 48% between 1990 and 2008, more than the overall U.S. teen pregnancy rate declined during the same period (42%). The teen birth rate decline broken down by race in 2014 from 2013:

Teen birth rates in the United States are higher than that of many other developed countries.

In 2013, the lowest birth rates were reported in the Northeast, while the highest rates were located in the south east. For example, a 2001 study by UNICEF found that the US teenage birth rate was the highest among 28 OECD nations in the review; in a 1999 comparison by the Guttmacher Institute, U.S. teen pregnancy and teen birth rates were the second-highest among the 46 developed countries studied. In 2002, the U.S. was rated 84th out of 170 World Health Organization member countries based on teenage fertility rate.

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