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Thursday, February 21, 2013

Teen pregnancy declines more slowly in rural areas

The national teen pregnancy rate is lower than ever, but "The teen birth rate in rural counties is nearly one-third higher than the rest of the nation" and is declining more slowly than in metropolitan areas, USA Today reports, citing what is says is a "first-of-its-kind analysis by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy."

"The prevailing stereotype is that teen parenthood is primarily an urban and suburban phenomenon," Bill Albert, chief program officer for the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit, told reporter Michelle Healy. "The landscape of teen childbearing is more open spaces and fresh air than gridlock and high-rises." And that applies across all ethnic and racial groups, the data show.

Researchers used National Center for Health Statistics data for 2010, the most recent available (2011 figures are still being double-checked). From 1990 to 2010, the teen birth rate in rural counties dropped 32 percent, but that was much less than in major metro areas (49 percent) and suburbs (40 percent). The national rate dropped to 34 per 1,000 teenage girls from 60 per 1,000; the rural rate was 43 per 1,000.

The reasons? Availability of birth control in rural areas "lags far behind availability for teens living in urban and metro areas," said Julia De Clerque,​​ a research fellow and investigator at the University of North Carolina Sheps Center for Health Services Research. Also, "For many rural families, teen pregnancy and parenting are cultural norms, repeated generation after generation," said Josie Weiss, a nursing professor at Florida Atlantic University. (Read more)

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