Education in States and Nations: 1991

(ESN) Indicator 6: Births to teen mothers

Births to teen mothers are represented here by the percentage of all live births in a country or state that occur to women aged 15 to 19. This percentage represents a proportion of the cohort of infants likely born into an environment of disadvantage. Teen mothers tend to have fewer resources than older mothers because they have had less time in which to accumulate savings or build up their own productive capacity through work experience, education, or training. Moreover, while most mothers can draw upon the additional resources of fathers, teen fathers tend to be plagued by the same paucity of resources as are teen mothers. Teen fathers are also less likely than older fathers to legally commit themselves to supporting the family. Indeed, in the European Community as a whole and in the United States, a majority of teen mothers are not married. With a baby to care for, a teen is also less likely to complete secondary school or to go on to higher education, thus further limiting economic opportunities.

• Births to teen mothers in 1990 ranged from less than 2 percent of all births in the Netherlands to 8.5 percent in Portugal. Three countries - Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Greece (at 8.5 percent, 7.9 percent, and 7.1 percent, respectively) - reported higher percentages of teen births than did the United States (at 6.0 percent).

• There were five countries - Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands - whose percentages of teen births were equal to or lower than that of New Hampshire, the state with the lowest percentage (3.3).

• In 30 states, fewer than 6 percent of births were to teen mothers. This was also the case in 9 of the 12 European countries for which data are available.

Note on interpretation:

A number of teens aged 14 and younger in all the countries represented here do become mothers. But, the proportion of teen mothers aged 14 and younger in all countries is exceedingly small. It is possible that 14-year-old mothers were responsible for as many as 1.1 percent of births in Portugal in 1990. In all other European Community countries reporting age-specific fertility data, that percentage was well below 1.

Table 5b

Figure 6