The Teenage Birth Rate Has Dropped to a 65-Year Low

This story appeared originally on WireTapMag.org.

It should come as good news that in 2005 the teenage birth rate in the United States dropped to a 65-year low. Who's behind ameliorating the problem? Champions of comprehensive sex education and abstinence-only advocates both claim credit for the findings in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics report.

Let's posit this scenario: You're 16. You buy a soda and a pack of condoms at the corner store. That afternoon you have sex. You know how to put on the condom because you were taught in your public high school. Anyway, the condom is just a backup. Your girlfriend is on the pill. Some people say your education has encouraged you to take a life-threatening health risk.

Here's an alternative scenario: You're the federal government. You've thrown over a billion dollars into abstinence-only-until-marriage education. In a decade, you've transformed sex education in many states. Your message? There is no such thing as safe sex. Is your plan working? Your opponents say you're better off throwing your money down a wishing well.

Who's right?

According to Bill Albert, deputy director at the National Campaign to End Teen Pregnancy, "both 'sides' should declare victory."

"The short answer is quite simple: both less sex and more contraception," he wrote in an email. "Researchers disagree about the relative contribution of each to the overall declines in teen pregnancy, but all agree that it is some combination of less sexual activity and greater contraceptive use."

Information equals safe sex

Monica Rodriguez, vice president of education and training at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, says that the birth rate is down mostly because of an increase in the consistent use of improved hormonal birth control methods, like the pill, the patch, the shot and the implant. Her claims are supported by the widely read report released in late 2006 that found that 86 percent of the decline in pregnancy risk can be attributed to improved contraceptive use and that 14 percent of the decline can be attributed to teens waiting longer to start having sex.

The decrease did not happen overnight. Abstinence didn't instantaneously come into vogue. Nor was there a surge of birth control pill popping. Instead, there has been a steady drop in the number of teenage girls giving birth since 1991. That year the birth rate was at a record high of 61.8 per 1,000 teens. In 2005, the rate dropped to 40.4 births per 1,000 teens. The abortion rate among this age group is also going down.

Albert offers another piece in the puzzle. HIV prevention education may finally be "catching up." It's common, he says, for public health information to take a long time -- even decades -- to actually effect the way people behave.

Black teens changing course

Here's another great thing: Black teens aged 15 to 17 experienced the steepest reduction in teen births. Some people surmise that the decrease is simply because the group with the highest rate will also have the greatest decline. But Dr. Michael A. Carrera, director of the Children's Aid Society's Stern National Adolescent Sexuality Training Center, thinks there's more to it. He speculates that there is a connection between the declining black teen birthrate and the increased educational efforts -- primarily through after school programs and community centers -- in underserved urban communities. Many of those programs, he says, wisely take an integrated and holistic approach to preventing teen pregnancy.

"A beautifully framed sex education program will not get the job done unless you link it to all the other things that are getting in the way a making a young person whole ... failing in school, poor housing, no primary care, no counselor, no one to confide in, no job or bank account," he says.