Nearly 615,000 teen pregnancies occur each year in the United States, but historically low rates reported this week may prove that those “free condom” baskets at health center waiting rooms are actually working.
Statistics released this week show historically low trends in teen pregnancy nationwide. The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and policy advocacy group, released a report this week analyzing public health and birth certificate data from 2010, (the most recent available) to examine teen pregnancy rates by state, age, race, and ethnicity.
In 2010, approximately 6 percent of teens became pregnant, the lowest rate in more than 30 years. That’s 57.4 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage women, a 51 percent drop from the peak rate in 1990. From 2008 to 2010 alone, there was a 15 percent drop.
So what’s the secret to the decline? Perhaps it’s the debut of MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” that some think might be pop culture’s answer to birth control. But the report this week attributes the decline in teen pregnancy to an increase in contraceptive use and overall access to health services.
“The decline in the teen pregnancy rate is great news,” lead author Kathryn Kost said in a statement with the report’s release. “Other reports had already demonstrated sustained declines in births among teens in the past few years; but now we know that this is due to the fact that fewer teens are becoming pregnant in the first place. It appears that efforts to ensure teens can access the information and contraceptive services they need to prevent unwanted pregnancies are paying off.”
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