It was around 60/1000 in 1990 and 15/1000 in 2021. The US used to be a huge outlier among developed countries because of its high teen birth rate, but that’s not really the case anymore. In Massachusetts in 2021, the rate was 6/1000, a whole order of magnitude lower than 60/1000. The abortion rate has fallen steeply, too. Generation Z totally killed teen pregnancy, but no one even talks about it
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Good news doesn’t get clicks
Thanks “Teen Mom” loll
The Morning after pill probably has a lot to do with it. You can get it without prescription
Birth control, plan b, and abortion.
I suspect the rate will go up again post-Roe.
Planned parenthood. Access to birth control WITHOUT parental involvement.
One big factor is the increased availability of long-acting contraceptives (e.g., IUDs). The failure rate is significantly lower when you don’t have to remember to do anything (like taking a pill every day).
I’d guess it’s sex education, and probably not in schools, just the availability of information on the internet
Its part of a fairly long term trend. The teen birth rate was in decline as millennial girls hit their teenage years. The overall birth rate has declined considerably over the last several years. Millennial women have fewer children. Gen Z will probably follow the same path unless social conditions change over the next few years which unleash another baby boom (these will not be contraception bans, they will be some sort of enormous prosperity boom like we had from 1946-1964. A baby boom that starts in like 2030 and lasts for 20 years would be on cycle.
While it doesn’t completely explain the drop or anything, and this is just a theory, but I think HIV/AIDS played a part in increasing condom usage across the entire population and making safe sex a more talked-about topic. Especially around the late 80s/early 90s it transitioned from being a “gay” disease in a lot of people’s minds to being one that anybody could get. And with that, came increased availability of condoms, ergo more safe sex.
I think you put that together with better sex-ed, more access to birth control and declining rates of drug/alcohol abuse (which frequently lead to unprotected sex) and yeah, I think you could make an argument all of that helped drop teen pregnancy rates
People are generally having less sex. I know that sounds nuts, but the Washington Post has [reported that nearly one of three men 30 and under hasn’t had sex in the past year](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-americans-not-having-sex-has-reached-record-high/). It would follow that birth rates among the younger demographic would fall as well.
Probably because it undermines older generations narrative that the younger generations are way worse than their generations were