Teen births tilt up, unmarried rate hits record

A pregnant woman is seen behind a curtain in a file photo. The birth rate for teenagers increased in 2006 in the United States for the first time since 1991, while childbearing among unmarried women surged to the highest level on record, health officials said on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The birth rate for teenagers increased in 2006 in the United States for the first time since 1991, while childbearing among unmarried women surged to the highest level on record, health officials said on Wednesday.

Across-the-board increases in birth rates for women ages 15 to 44 drove the total U.S. fertility rate -- the estimated average number of births for women in their lifetimes -- to its highest mark since 1971, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report.

The birth rate for females aged 15 to 19 rose by 3 percent in 2006 from the previous year, to 41.9 live births per 1,000 from 40.5 in 2005. This ends 14 years of declines during which the teen birth rate dropped by 34 percent from a peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991.

The increases were largest among black teens, whose birth rate climbed 5 percent in 2006 from the prior year. The rate was up 3 percent for white and 2 percent for Hispanic teens.

"It could be a new trend, but it's just really too soon to say," Stephanie Ventura, who heads the CDC's Reproductive Statistics Branch, said in a telephone interview.

The reasons for the rise in the teenage birth rate are unclear, Ventura said, but she noted there is early evidence that declines in U.S. teen sexual activity have leveled off.

"I don't know if the use of contraception among teens has changed. We just don't know what's happening," Ventura said.

Critics of the U.S. government's emphasis on funding abstinence-only programs to combat teen pregnancy seized on the figures as a sign of failure of those policies.

'DUBIOUS DISTINCTION'

"The United States still holds the dubious distinction of having the highest teen pregnancy rate among the most developed nations," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.

"Congress should put the right foot forward and immediately stop funding for dangerous abstinence-only programs that deny young people information about how to prevent pregnancy, protect their health and make responsible decisions."

The CDC said the birth rate among the youngest girls -- ages 10 to 14 -- declined last year.

Births to unmarried girls and women reached their highest levels in 2006 since the government began tracking such statistics in 1940, Ventura said.

Unmarried girls and women accounted for 38.5 percent of all U.S. births last year, up from 36.9 percent in 2005. Among blacks, they accounted for 70.7 percent of births. Among Hispanics, it was 49.9 percent and among whites 26.6 percent.

The out-of-wedlock birth rate rose by a sharp 7 percent last year. Ventura said from about 1995 to 2002, statistics on births by unmarried women had remained pretty stable, but since then have been on the way up. About 40 percent of unmarried women giving birth are in cohabiting relationships, she added.

"There certainly is greater acceptance of children being born out of wedlock. For instance, you see many fewer marriages after conception but before birth than you did in the past," said David Landry of the Guttmacher Institute in New York.

The U.S. fertility rate was about 2.1 births per woman of child-bearing age over her lifetime. It is the first time since the early 1970s that the rate was above the replacement level, at which a given generation can replace itself, the CDC said.

The total numbers of births in the United States in 2006 was about 4.3 million, up 3 percent from 2005.

The CDC also said 31.1 percent of all births last year were by Caesarean section, a record high. The proportion of births by Caesarean section has risen 50 percent in the past decade.