Global InformationPrevalence of teenage pregnancy information
Industrialized and developing countries have distinctly different rates of teenage pregnancy. In Western countries such as the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, teen parents tend to be unmarried, and adolescent pregnancy is seen as a social issue.
By contrast, teenage parents in non-Western countries such as Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands are often married, and their pregnancy may be welcomed by family and society. However, in these societies, early pregnancy may combine with malnutrition and poor health care to cause long-term medical problems for both the mother and child. A report by Save the Children found that, annually, 13 million children are born to women under age 20 worldwide. More than 90% of these births occur to women living in developing countries. Complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of mortality among women between the ages of 15 and 19 in such areas, as they are the leading cause of mortality among older women.
The age of the mother is determined by the easily verified date when the pregnancy ends, not by the estimated date of conception.[3] Consequently, the statistics do not include women who first became pregnant before their 20th birthdays, if those pregnancies did not end until on or after their 20th birthdays.[3]
- ^ "Adolescent birth rate in women aged 10-19 years". Our World in Data. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
- ^ "Adolescent birth rate per 1,000 women aged 15-19". Our World in Data. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
- ^ a b Kost K, Henshaw S, Carlin L (2010). "U.S. Teenage Pregnancies, Births and Abortions: National and State Trends and Trends by Race and Ethnicity" (PDF). Guttmacher Institute.
Pregnancies are the sum of births, abortions and miscarriages. Please note that in these tables, "age" refers to the woman's age when the pregnancy ended. Consequently, actual numbers of pregnancies that occurred among teenagers are higher than those reported here, because most of the women who conceived at age 19 had their births or abortions after they turned 20 and, thus, were not counted as teenagers.