Teenage Birthrate Hit a Record Low in 2002, Report Says

The teenage birthrate reached a record low in 2002, dropping to the lowest level since the government started keeping records in the 1940s, according to an annual report on the well-being of America’s children.

Twenty-three girls per 1,000, ages 15 to 17, gave birth in 2002, a decrease of 40% since 1991, the report said. Births among girls ages 18 to 19 also dropped to historic lows. The largest decreases were among black teenagers.

“The drop in the adolescent birthrate is one of the biggest success stories,” said Dr. Duane Alexander, a pediatrician and director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

When the pregnancy rate was climbing in the late 1980s, “people got really energized and started a lot of programs that got the teenagers’ attention,” said Stephanie Ventura, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics.

As a result, teenagers have been using contraceptives more often, particularly condoms, and are having sex less often or abstaining.

California has seen a particularly steep drop, said Martha Swiller, senior vice president of Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles. “Our teen pregnancy rate has gone down at a higher rate than any other state,” she said.

The report from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics is the nation’s primary collection of child well-being data. It has been issued each year since 1997, gathering together 25 key indicators of the well-being of America’s 73 million children from 20 federal agencies.

The report includes statistics on issues such as health, poverty, families, education, violent crime, smoking and drug use.

While the report contained mostly positive news -- youth violence continues to drop and advanced high school courses have the highest enrollments in 20 years -- it also highlighted several negative issues.

One trend was an increase in infant mortality in 2002 to seven deaths in 1,000 births -- a small but significant rise following a decades-long decrease.

The increase might be the result of better fetal medicine, said Edward Sondik, director of the National Center for Health Statistics. Better care is allowing premature and sick babies to survive birth, only to die within the first weeks of life.

The setback in 2002 probably did not continue in 2003, according to preliminary analysis of the year’s data. The infant mortality rate seems to have leveled off.

More babies also weighed too little when born, raising the chance of blindness, deafness and mental retardation. The percentage of infants born weighing less than 5.5 pounds increased to 7.8%, continuing a gradual trend in the last 20 years.

Fertility treatments may be behind some of the problem, the report noted, because the procedure increases the number of multiple births, which raises the risk of low birth weight.

Black infants were the most likely to have low birth weight, the report said.

As children grow, however, they are increasingly getting too heavy. Mirroring the growth in obesity among adults, 16% of children were overweight, up from 6% in 1980. Almost a quarter of black, non-Latino girls, and more than a quarter of Mexican American boys, were overweight.

Heavy children are more likely to become obese adults, Sondik said, increasing their vulnerability to chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure.

An encouraging sign was that children under 18 were less likely to be involved in violent crimes -- murder, rape, robbery or aggravated assault. The rate of children becoming either victims or offenders has dropped by about 75% since 1993.