Facts on the Sexual and Reproductive Health of Adolescent Women in the Developing World

CONTEXT • Helping adolescents protect their health is an important public health priority. Beyond benefiting young people themselves , increased investment in adolescent sexual and reproductive health contributes to broader development goals, especially improvements in the overall status of women and, eventually, reductions in poverty among families. • In every developing country, early marriage and early childbearing are most common among poor women and those with little education, two factors that are themselves intricately related. 1 • Whether they are single or married, most adolescent women are poor or without monetary resources of their own—some because they are still in school, others because they are married with little or no control over household income, they are not working or they earn very low wages. 1 • Inadequate knowledge about contraception and how to obtain health services, high risk of sexual violence 2 and little independence in deciding on the timing of births or use of contraception 3 are other reasons why many adolescent women in developing countries are especially vulnerable. • In addition, in most parts of the developing world, unmarried adolescents often face societal disapproval and condemnation if they are sexually active. 4,5 • There are an estimated 260 million women and 280 million men aged 15–19 in developing countries. 6 • An estimated 70% of these adolescent women live in Sub-Saharan Africa (45 million), South Central and Southeast Asia (113 million), and Latin America and the Caribbean (45 million). This fact sheet focuses on those regions. It omits Oceania, North Africa, Eastern Asia and Western Asia because they are inadequately covered by Demographic and Health Surveys or similar national studies. • Adolescent women account for about one-fifth of all women of reproductive age (15–49) in these regions—23% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 19% in South Central and Southeast Asia, and 17% in Latin America and the Caribbean. • Most women aged 15–19 in Sub-Saharan Africa—some 83%—live in low-income countries, while 71% of those in South Central and Southeast Asia live in lower-middle–income countries, and 70% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean live in upper-middle– to high-income countries.* • Variations in patterns of marriage, contraceptive use and levels of unin-tended pregnancy among adolescent women are closely linked to their region and the level of poverty in their country. • Twenty-nine percent of adolescent women in Sub-Saharan Africa are married, as are 22% in South Central and Southeast Asia and …