11 Facts About Teen Pregnancy

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1. 3 in 10 teen American girls will get pregnant at least once before age 20. That’s nearly 750,000 teen pregnancies every year.^[Kost, Kathryn, and Stanley Henshaw. “U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions 2008: National Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity.” New York: Guttmacher Institute. [Online]. Accessed February 11, 2014, .]
2. Parenthood is the leading reason that teen girls drop out of school. More than 50% of teen mothers never graduate from high school.^[StayTeen. "Stay Informed: Teen Pregnancy." StayTeen. Accessed March 10, 2015. .]
3. About 25% of teen moms have a 2nd child within 24 months of their first baby.^[HealthResearchFunding.org. "22 Important Unplanned Teenage Pregnancy Statistics." HealthResearchFunding.org. Accessed March 10, 2015. .]
4. Less than 2% of teen moms earn a college degree by age 30.^[StayTeen. "Stay Informed: Teen Pregnancy." StayTeen. Accessed March 5, 2015. .]
5. The United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the western industrialized world.^[Boonstra, H. "Teen Pregnancy: Trends And Lessons Learned." The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy 5, no. 1 (2002). Accessed February 11, 2014, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/05/1/gr050107.html.]
6. In 2011, the teen birthrate in the United States fell to the lowest level recorded in nearly 70 years of tracking teen childbearing.^[Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. "Pregnancy and Childbearing Among U.S. Teens." PlannedParenthood.org. Accessed February 11, 2014, http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/pregnancy_and_childbearing.pdf.]
7. In 2008, the teen pregnancy rate among African-American and Hispanic teen girls, ages 15 to 19, was over two and a half times higher than the teen pregnancy rate among white teen girls of the same age group.^[Kost, Kathryn, and Stanley Henshaw. “U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions 2008: National Trends by Age, Race and Ethnicity.” New York: Guttmacher Institute. [Online]. Accessed February 11, 2014, http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/USTPtrends08.pdf.]
8. 8 out of 10 teen dads don’t marry the mother of their child.^[StayTeen. "Stay Informed: Teen Pregnancy." StayTeen. Accessed March 10, 2015. .]
9. A sexually active teen who doesn’t use contraceptives has a 90% chance of becoming pregnant within a year.^[American Civil Liberties Union. "Preventing Teenagers from Getting Contraceptives Unless They Tell a Parent Puts Teens at Risk." ACLU.org. Accessed February 11, 2014, https://www.aclu.org/reproductive-freedom/preventing-teenagers-getting-contraceptives-unless-they-tell-parent-puts-teens-.]
10. More than half of all mothers on welfare had their first child as a teenager. In fact, two-thirds of families begun by a young, unmarried mother are poor.^[StayTeen. "StayInformed: Teen Pregnancy." Stay Teen. Accessed March 10, 2015. .]
11. Teens had fewer babies in 2010 than in any year since the mid-1940s.^[Hamilton, Ph.D., Brady E., and Stephanie J. Ventura, M.A.. "Birth Rates for U.S. Teenagers Reach Historic Lows for All Age and Ethnic Groups." CDC.gov. Accessed February 11, 2014, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db89.htm.]