Teenage pregnancy and birth rates--United States, 1990.

Teenage Pregnancy — Continued In 1990, there were an estimated 1 million pregnancies and 521,626 births to U.S. women aged 15–19 years (1). Because of the adverse health, social, and economic consequences of teenage childbearing, CDC analyzed data on teenage pregnancies and births (1,2). These data will be used to monitor progress toward national goals and to assist in targeting program efforts to reduce teenage pregnancy (2). This report presents pregnancy and birth rates for states by race/ethnicity for 1990 and compares rates with those for 1980 (3). For this report, teenage pregnancy rates were defined as the sum of live births and legal induced abortions per 1000 women aged 15–19 years. Teenage birth rates were defined as the number of live births per 1000 women in the age group, and abortion rates, as the number of legal induced abortions per 1000 women. Information on births was obtained from 1990 birth certificates, and on abortions, from state reports to CDC. Births were reported by state of residence, and abortions, by state of occurrence. Numbers of women aged 15–19 years were obtained from unpublished tabulations provided by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Because the numbers of abortions by age of women were not available for 10 states, pregnancy rates for women aged 15–19 years could be calculated for only 40 states and the District of Columbia (DC); birth rates were calculated for all 50 states and DC. For this analysis, pregnancy and birth rates were calculated for white, black, and Hispanic women (pregnancy rates were calculated only for the 30 states where information on abortions was available by race and ethnicity of women)*; rates for other racial/ethnic groups were not calculated because the numbers of pregnancies and births for other groups were too small at the state level to compute reliable rates. In addition, abortion data were not available for other racial/ethnic groups. Differences in rates for 1980 and 1990 are statistically significant at the 0.05 level. *Because of data-collection methods for 1990 abortions, Hispanic origin was not reported separately by race. Abortion data for Hispanics were included with whites for pr egnancy rate calculations because 97% of Hispanic women who had a live-born infant in 1990 were white (1). Six states