Rate of Births to Teen-Agers Is Down Again
America’s teen-age birth rate dropped for the second year in a row, the government said Thursday.
Stephanie Ventura, a statistician at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the reasons for the drop are not clear, but she speculated that more teen-agers are using condoms because of the risk of AIDS.
The birth rate among American teen-agers dropped 2% in 1993, the most recent year examined by the CDC. The rate also fell 2% in 1992.
The figures mark a reversal of the sharp increases in the late 1980s, when the teen-age birth rate jumped 5% or more a year.
For every 1,000 women ages 15 to 19 in 1993, 59.6 gave birth.
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