“What happened was a postponement of births among younger women with a longer time horizon,” said Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins University sociologist specializing in family issues. “Women over 30 couldn’t wait that much longer.”
While the decelerating decline in birth rates since 2009 reflects the easing of the recession’s impact, the striking drop in teenage pregnancies shows little sign of abating. The teen pregnancy rate in 2009, of about 38 per thousand girls, was 39 percent lower than the 1991 peak of 62. Just four years later, in 2017, it reached a record low of about 29.
Sally Curtin, one of the report’s authors, said the historic drop is being driven by a long, downward trend of fewer teenagers having sex, and among those who do, a sharp increase in their use of contraceptives.
“It’s as if both sides in the debate over teen pregnancy were right,” said Cherlin, noting that concerns over the AIDS epidemic may have played a role in the growing use of condoms among teenage boys.
“AIDS has forced many school districts to talk about contraception, even if they didn’t want to,” he said.
The national trends are evident in the Washington area.
Teenage pregnancy rates have plummeted in the District, down to less than a quarter of where they were two decades ago, said Brenda Rhodes Miller, director of the DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. In 1993, the pregnancy rate for teenagers aged 15 to 19 was about 239 per 1,000. By 2011, it was under 55.
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