The Nation - News from June 5, 1987

The percentage of girls under 16 who are sexually active continued to grow through the early 1980s, but the ratio of older teen-agers who engage in sex began to level off, a study said. The report, published in the Alan Guttmacher Institute’s magazine, said the percentage of teen-age females who had become sexually active by age 20 had stabilized at 65% for whites and 88% for blacks, but increased for those who became sexually active at ages 14 and 15--20% in the early 1980s, compared to 14% in the early 1970s.