Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting

Lauren M. Rich

In 1976, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported that the rate of pregnancy for 15- to 19-year-olds was 101.4 per 1,000 adolescents. This rate peaked in 1990, at 116.8 pregnancies per 1,000 adolescents. This means that, in 1990, 11.7 percent of U.S. teenagers were pregnant, compared to 7.6 percent in 2002. Overall, about three-quarters of a million teens become pregnant over a one-year period, and approximately 8 in 10 of these pregnancies are unintended. Between 5 and 6 out of 10 of these pregnancies end in birth, while about 3 in 10 end in abortion, and the rest end in spontaneous miscarriage. Pregnancy rates have historically been higher among racial and ethnic minority teens than among white teens. For example, in 1990, the pregnancy rate for non-Hispanic white teens was 86.8 per 1,000 adolescents. In contrast, it was more than 2.5 times as high for non-Hispanic blacks (at ...

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