US teen births tilt up, unmarried rate hits record
Pastor Dale Morgan
US teen births tilt up, unmarried rate hits record*
05 Dec 2007 22:11:44 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The birth rate for unwed teenagers
increased in 2006 in the United States for the first time since 1991,
while childbearing among unmarried women surged to the highest level on
record, health officials said on Wednesday.
Across-the-board increases in birth rates for women ages 15 to 44 drove
the total U.S. fertility rate -- the estimated average number of births
for women in their lifetimes -- to its highest mark since 1971, the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report.
The birth rate for females aged 15 to 19 rose by 3 percent in 2006 from
the previous year, to 41.9 live births per 1,000 from 40.5 in 2005. This
ends 14 years of declines during which the teen birth rate dropped by 34
percent from a peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991.
The increases were largest among black teens, whose birth rate climbed 5
percent in 2006 from the prior year. The rate was up 3 percent for white
and 2 percent for Hispanic teens.
"It could be a new trend, but it's just really too soon to say,"
Stephanie Ventura, who heads the CDC's Reproductive Statistics Branch,
said in a telephone interview.
The reasons for the rise in the teenage birth rate are unclear, Ventura
said, but she noted there is early evidence that declines in U.S. teen
sexual activity have leveled off.
"I don't know if the use of contraception among teens has changed. We
just don't know what's happening," Ventura said.
Critics of the U.S. government's emphasis on funding abstinence-only
programs to combat teen pregnancy seized on the figures as a sign of
failure of those policies.
'DUBIOUS DISTINCTION'
"The United States still holds the dubious distinction of having the
highest teen pregnancy rate among the most developed nations," Cecile
Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in
a statement.
"Congress should put the right foot forward and immediately stop funding
for dangerous abstinence-only programs that deny young people
information about how to prevent pregnancy, protect their health and
make responsible decisions."
The CDC said the birth rate among the youngest girls -- ages 10 to 14 --
declined last year.
Births to unmarried girls and women reached their highest levels in 2006
since the government began tracking such statistics in 1940, Ventura said.
Unmarried girls and women accounted for 38.5 percent of all U.S. births
last year, up from 36.9 percent in 2005. Among blacks, they accounted
for 70.7 percent of births. Among Hispanics, it was 49.9 percent and
among whites 26.6 percent.
The out-of-wedlock birth rate rose by a sharp 7 percent last year.
Ventura said from about 1995 to 2002, statistics on births by unmarried
women had remained pretty stable, but since then have been on the way
up. About 40 percent of unmarried women giving birth are in cohabiting
relationships, she added.
"There certainly is greater acceptance of children being born out of
wedlock. For instance, you see many fewer marriages after conception but
before birth than you did in the past," said David Landry of the
Guttmacher Institute in New York.
The U.S. fertility rate was about 2.1 births per woman of child-bearing
age over her lifetime. It is the first time since the early 1970s that
the rate was above the replacement level, at which a given generation
can replace itself, the CDC said.
The total numbers of births in the United States in 2006 was about 4.3
million, up 3 percent from 2005.
The CDC also said 31.1 percent of all births last year were by Caesarean
section, a record high. The proportion of births by Caesarean section
has risen 50 percent in the past decade.