Teen pregnancy rates down, women giving birth later in life

[Honeykiss1974]

Birth rate is flat, and new moms are older
BY KAREN SHIDELER
The Wichita Eagle

The "average baby" -- as if there could ever be such a thing -- was a boy born on a Tuesday in August to a Utah woman between ages 25 and 29.

That snapshot comes from "Births: Final Data for 2002," a report released Wednesday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It shows what's going on in maternity wards across the United States.

The report is based on the 4,021,726 live births -- including 39,412 in Kansas -- reported on birth certificates in 2002. Of the babies, 2,057,979 were male and 1,963,747 were female.

The number of births was about the same as in 2001, the report says. Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, Utah and Wyoming saw significant increases in the number of births. The birth rate decreased in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio and South Carolina.

Utah is the state with the highest birth rate; Vermont has the lowest.

August was the month with the most births, followed closely by September. November was the month with the fewest. The most births took place on Tuesdays, the fewest on Sundays.

Some of the statistics in the report are reassuring:

The teen birth rate continued to fall among all racial groups, with 43.0 births being reported for every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19. For 10- to 14-year-olds, the rate is 0.7 per 1,000, also the lowest rate ever. In Kansas, the rate for teens 15 to 19 has decreased from 55.4 in 1991 to 43.0 in 2002.

Cigarette smoking during pregnancy also continued to drop, and the number of women getting prenatal care continued to increase.

Some of the statistics are surprising:

Birth rates among women ages 30 to 34 dropped, the first decrease in a decade.

Birth rates among women 35 to 39 and 40 to 44 were the highest in three decades.

The report shows a number of trends continuing. As in years past, the rate of women under 30 giving birth for the first time continued to drop, while rates continued to rise for older women.

The average age of first-time mothers continues to increase, from 21.4 in 1970 to 25.1 in 2002, an all-time high.

The report says the teen pregnancy rate is dropping because of decreases in the number of teens having sex and increases in condom use among sexually active teenagers. The number of abortions also has dropped through the years, though data for 2002 isn't available yet.

The report links the increasing number of births in older women in part to the use of fertility-enhancing therapies.

A separate report from the CDC says success rates from "assisted reproductive technology" continue to increase, from 25.4 percent in 2000 to 27 percent in 2001.

The number of single births also continues to increase: That's important because a "singleton" birth has a much lower risk of bad outcomes than a birth with two or more babies.