NOTE TO EDITORS The November/December, 2001 issue of Family Planning Perspectives, a peer-reviewed journal of The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), is devoted entirely to teenage sexual and reproductive health.
The use of contraceptives, particularly the pill, by sexually active teenage women is lower in the United States than in other developed countries, according to "Differences in Teenage Pregnancy Rates Among Five Developed Countries: The Roles of Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use." The study, by Jacqueline Darroch, AGI senior vice president and vice president for research, et al., analyzes findings from in-depth case studies of five countries: Canada, Great Britain, France, Sweden and the United States.
Despite recent declines in adolescent pregnancy in the United States, the current U.S. pregnancy rate is 2-4 times the rate in the comparison countries. However, U.S. teens have similar levels of sexual activity to teens in the other countries, and so this factor does not account for the variation in teenage pregnancy and childbearing rates between the countries.
DISADVANTAGE LINKED WITH HIGHER TEEN CHILDBEARING
U.S. Has Higher Levels of Disadvantage and Childbearing
The December issue of International Family Planning Perspectives also includes:
Another factor in explaining the higher U.S. teenage pregnancy rates and birthrates is widespread disadvantage in the U.S. compared with other developed countries, according to "Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Adolescent Women's Sexual and Reproductive Behavior: The Case of Five Developed Countries." The study, by Susheela Singh, director of research with AGI, et al., is based on in-depth case studies in five countries.
In all five study countries, across income and education levels, poorer and less-educated women are more likely than their better-off peers to have a child during adolescence. The relatively large numbers of disadvantaged people in the United States, combined with disadvantaged teenagers' greater likelihood of having a child, is an important factor in explaining national differences in teenage childbearing. According to the authors, the proportion of the U.S. population that is poor is at least two-thirds larger than that of the other four study countries. However, even highly educated and affluent U.S. adolescents are more likely to have a child during their teenage years than their peers in other countries.
EARLY CHILDBEARING LINKED WITH LOWER EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT
Women who have children in their teens are less likely to complete high school and much less likely to attend college than women who delay childbearing, according to "The Effects of Early Childbearing on Schooling over Time." The study, by Sandra Hofferth of the University of Maryland, Lori Reid of Florida State University and Frank L. Mott of Ohio State University, is based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the Labor Market Experience of Youth and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.
According to the study, years of schooling have increased for all groups. As a result, teen mothers are at least as comparatively disadvantaged today as they were in the past. While the impact of a teen birth on high school completion has declined, the probability of all women's attending college has increased, with women who have children at an older age attending college in greater numbers than women who have children in their teens. While earlier studies have indicated that lower levels of schooling among teenage mothers can be attributed to socioeconomic factors and not directly linked to teen childbearing, this study finds that having a child as a teenager is directly related to educational attainment.
EARLY INITIATION OF SEXUAL ACTIVITY LINKED WITH
By the time they reach 10th grade, teens who become sexually active before seventh grade have a greater number of sexual partners and more frequent intercourse, according to "Early Sexual Initiation and Subsequent Sex-Related Risks Among Urban Minority Youth: The Reach for Health Study," by Lydia O'Donnell and Carl O'Donnell of the Education Development Center, and Ann Stueve of Columbia University. Despite this greater experience, youth who initiate sex early do not use condoms more consistently, and by 10th grade, they have experienced a disproportionate number of pregnancies.
The study is based on a survey of economically disadvantaged New York middle school students in 1994-1996. The analysis of the survey data indicates that sexual risk-taking among teens must be approached both through early interventions to delay sexual initiation and by breaking the pattern of ongoing risk-taking among those who become sexually active at an early age.
VIEWPOINT
This issue of the journal also contains a viewpoint, entitled "Understanding What Works and What Doesn't In Reducing Adolescent Sexual Risk-Taking," by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates. The author proposes that a common thread ties together the diverse factors that predict risky sexual behavior among U.S. teenagers and the programs that have succeeded in reducing such behavior. Based on his review of risk-reduction programs, Kirby found that seemingly diverse risk and protection factors associated with sexual risk-taking can be linked, in part, by the influence of social norms and group connectedness. If a group has clear norms for (or against) sex or contraceptive use, then teens associated with this group will be more (or less) likely to have sex or use contraceptives, with the impact of the group increasing the more closely connected teens are to the group.