This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/where-the-precipitous-drop-in-birthrates-is-a-very-very-good-thing/
Teen birthrates are a small fraction of what they used to be
As some of America’s most prominent conservative voices push the pronatalist movement, there’s been a dramatic decrease in pregnancies and births among one particular subset of Wisconsin females that should get more attention — and praise.
Births to teenage girls in the Badger State have plummeted.
In 1990, there were 43 births per 1,000 females aged 15 through 19 in Wisconsin. By 2023, the last year for which data is available, there were only 10 births per 1,000.
Births to girls under the age of 18, moreover, are in many Wisconsin counties either rare or non-existent. At least one county that had recorded births in a hospital — Taylor — had none of them to mothers under the age of 20 in 2023, according to Wisconsin Department of Health Services statistics. Another 16 of our 72 counties had no births at all to girls under the age of 18.
Milwaukee — which had 188 births to girls under the age of 18 and a total of 623 births to mothers under 20 that year — is the big outlier. But even there, birthrates among young mothers are way down.
The statewide phenomenon is not, thankfully, due to more abortions. In 1998, there were over 2,200 induced abortions among Wisconsin women or girls under the age of 20, according to a 1999 report published by the old Department of Health and Family Service’s Bureau of Health Information. In 2021, there were 673, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Those were the oldest and most recent reports I could find.
So what’s going on here?
According to recent paper by Alexandria Mickler and Jessica Tollestrup, Teen Births in the United States: Overview and Recent Trends:
Research suggests that multiple factors have led to lower teen birth rates in the United States. From the 1990s through 2019, the risk of teen pregnancy decreased primarily because of improved contraceptive use, including an increase in the use of more effective contraceptive methods (e.g., long-acting and reversible methods) and an increase in the use of multiple methods of contraception. During this period, some of the risk of pregnancy among younger teens declined because of decreased sexual activity; however, general trends in adolescent sexual activity have remained relatively stable. Broad economic and social variables may also influence teen behaviors, such as expanded educational or labor opportunities.
The decrease in teen birthrates is even more dramatic when compared to 60 or 70 years ago.
In the 1950s and 1960s, there were approximately 90 births per 1,000 teenage females in the United States — nine times the current rate.
That said, it’s not a very instructive comparison. Americans married at much younger ages back then. Only 5 percent of U.S. teenagers who gave birth in 1960 were not married. That changed dramatically by the mid-1990s when, in Wisconsin, 84 percent of teen births were to unmarried women or girls.
It’s well established that individuals who follow the “success sequence” — get at least a high school education, work full time, and marry before having children — are far more likely to be economically stable. The economics of having kids — and the relative stability of marriage versus navigating life as a single mother — were different in the middle of the last century. I don’t imagine life with kids at 18 was ever an easy road. But having a spouse had to help on balance back then. Today, having kids as a teenager is usually done solo — and fraught with difficult, lifelong consequences.
There’s a lot of talk in America of late about declining birthrates and whether that’s something that can be remedied.
What’s overlooked is the fact that part of the decrease is actually a very good thing.
Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute.
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