Teen Birth Rates and Educational Outcomes

Under­stand­ing Teen Birth Trends

Over the last two decades, the country’s teen birth rate has declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly. In 2023, 140,977 babies were born to females ages 15 to 19; this equates to a U.S. birth rate of 13 births per 1,000 teens, as report­ed in the 2025 KIDS COUNT^® Data Book.

Track­ing the nation’s teenage preg­nan­cy rate is impor­tant. Teen child­bear­ing can lead to a num­ber of added hur­dles for the moth­er and child. These include: 

• Height­ened risk of a preterm birth or a low-birth­weight baby. 
• Few­er fam­i­ly resources. 
• Reduced aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance and attainment. 
• Increased like­li­hood of con­tin­u­ing the teen par­ent­ing cycle. 

A 2025 report on teen births in the Unit­ed States notes that: ​“Ado­les­cent child­bear­ing is asso­ci­at­ed with sig­nif­i­cant social, health, and finan­cial risks for teens, their fam­i­lies and soci­ety more broadly.” 

Nation­al Trends in Teen Birth Rates

The most recent round of data — for 2023 — sets the nation­al teen birth rate at 13 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19. In the Unit­ed States, the teen birth rate has sharply declined over the last four decades, as indi­cat­ed below: 

• 1990: 60 births per 1,000 teens. 
• 2000: 48 births per 1,000 teens. 
• 2010: 34 births per 1,000 teens. 
• 2020: 15 births per 1,000 teens.

Anoth­er pos­i­tive devel­op­ment for teen birth rate trends: From 1990 to today, the total num­ber of teen births has dropped 73% — falling from 521,826 teen births in 1990 to just 140,977 teen births in 2023.

Across the Unit­ed States, the teen birth rate varies wide­ly among dif­fer­ent racial and eth­nic groups. The 2023 teen birth rates for all racial and eth­nic groups report­ed in the KIDS COUNT Data Cen­ter are: 

• Amer­i­can Indi­an or Alas­ka Native: 16 births per 1,000 teens
• Asian and Pacif­ic Islander: 3 births per 1,000 teens
• Black or African Amer­i­can 20 births per 1,000 teens
• His­pan­ic or Lati­no: 21 births per 1,000 teens
• Non-His­pan­ic white: 8 births per 1,000 teens
• Two or more races: 12 births per 1,000 teens 

As these find­ings indi­cate, only two racial and eth­nic groups — Asian and Pacif­ic Islander and Non-His­pan­ic white — have a teen birth rate that falls below the nation­al average. 

Teen Birth Rates by State

Teen birth rates vary wide­ly from state to state but some clear region­al trends exist. 

States in New Eng­land gen­er­al­ly fare best. New Hamp­shire has the low­est teen birth rate at 5 births per 1,000 teens, fol­lowed by Ver­mont and Mass­a­chu­setts, which each report­ed a teen birth rate of 6 births per 1,000 teens in 2023. States in the South seem to fare the worst. Mis­sis­sip­pi has the high­est teen birth rate at 25 births per 1,000 teens, fol­lowed by Arkansas at 24 births per 1,000 teens in 2023.

Teen Birth Rates and Edu­ca­tion­al Outcomes

How does teenage preg­nan­cy affect edu­ca­tion? The research in this area con­tin­ues to indi­cate that becom­ing a par­ent in ado­les­cence is dele­te­ri­ous­ly dis­rup­tive. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, teen moth­ers end up less edu­cat­ed than their gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion peers. For example: 

• Com­pared to moth­ers who give birth at an old­er age, teen moth­ers are sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly to have an asso­ci­ate’s degree, bach­e­lor’s degree or anoth­er high­er edu­ca­tion degree, per a 2023 study that looked at the long-term edu­ca­tion­al attain­ment and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty of moth­ers in both age groups. 
• Among females who do not give birth dur­ing ado­les­cence, 90% grad­u­ate from high school where­as just 50% of teen moth­ers receive a high school diplo­ma by age 22, accord­ing to a 2025 study pub­lished by the Con­gres­sion­al Research Service. 

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the 2025 Con­gres­sion­al Research Ser­vice study links such aca­d­e­m­ic deficits to long-term eco­nom­ic con­se­quences for teen par­ents and their fam­i­lies. These con­se­quences include: 

• reduced earn­ing poten­tial as adults; 
• increased reliance on pub­lic assistance; 
• missed oppor­tu­ni­ties to devel­op employ­ment skills; and 
• high­er like­li­hood of liv­ing in poverty. 

Researchers from the Insti­tute for Women’s Pol­i­cy Research exam­ined the eco­nom­ic returns to col­lege attain­ment for sin­gle moth­ers and their fam­i­lies. Their study found that: 

• With each addi­tion­al lev­el of edu­ca­tion, sin­gle moth­ers expe­ri­ence a 32% decline, on aver­age, in their like­li­hood of liv­ing in poverty. 
• Just 13% of sin­gle moth­ers with a bachelor’s degree live in pover­ty com­pared to 62% of sin­gle moth­ers with less than a high school diploma.
• Sin­gle moth­ers with a high school diplo­ma are over three times as like­ly to live in pover­ty when com­pared to sin­gle moth­ers with a bachelor’s degree. 

Also sig­nif­i­cant: Anoth­er study, led by a researcher at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, found that the impact of teenage preg­nan­cy was multi­gen­er­a­tional. It found that ​“ado­les­cent child­bear­ing has sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for ear­ly child­hood devel­op­ment — not just for the child of that moth­er, but also for the grand­child of that mother.” 

For exam­ple, chil­dren born to teen par­ents face their own aca­d­e­m­ic chal­lenges. One nation­al study com­pared teenage moth­er­hood and off­spring out­comes over a 30-year peri­od. It found chil­dren born to ado­les­cent par­ents were more like­ly to expe­ri­ence poor­er aca­d­e­m­ic out­comes, includ­ing:

• low­er school readi­ness scores; and
• low­er school performance.

Pol­i­cy, Pre­ven­tion, and Sup­port for Teen Pregnancies

Evi­dence-based inter­ven­tions — such as pro­mot­ing access to con­tra­cep­tives and pro­mot­ing group-based com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion — can reduce unin­tend­ed preg­nan­cies and improve teen birth rate trends.

One real-world exam­ple of such efforts in action: From 2008 to 2016, the Col­orado Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health and Envi­ron­ment imple­ment­ed an ini­tia­tive to improve con­tra­cep­tive access statewide. This ini­tia­tive was four-pronged. It involved: 1) increas­ing access to fam­i­ly-plan­ning ser­vices; 2) increas­ing access to con­tra­cep­tive devices; 3) pro­mot­ing healthy deci­sions and plan­ning; and 4) improv­ing pub­lic poli­cies and practices

This ini­tia­tive fol­lowed teenage females, ages 14–19, from 2008 to 2019. Dur­ing this time­frame, researchers doc­u­ment­ed clear progress on sev­er­al fronts: 

• The share of con­tra­cep­tive clients using a long-term reversible con­tra­cep­tive increased from 6% to 32%. 
• The ado­les­cent birthrate dropped from 11.2 to just 3.9 births per 1,000 teens. 
• The ado­les­cent abor­tion rate fell from 39.6 to 13.5 abor­tions per 1,000 teens. 
• The num­ber of sec­ond-order or high­er births to ado­les­cents fell from 1,258 to just 290 births per year.

Sev­er­al strate­gies that pol­i­cy­mak­ers can sup­port to real­ize fur­ther progress with teen birth rate trends include: 

• imple­ment­ing evi­dence-based teen preg­nan­cy pre­ven­tion programs;
• expand­ing young people’s access to health care ser­vices, Med­ic­aid fam­i­ly plan­ning ser­vices and Title X clin­ics; and
• uti­liz­ing mass media cam­paigns to pro­mote safer sex.

Sup­port for Young Parents

When ado­les­cents do become par­ents, mov­ing the nee­dle on help­ing these fam­i­lies suc­ceed requires pol­i­cy­mak­ers, com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions and pro­gram lead­ers to work strate­gi­cal­ly and col­lab­o­rate close­ly. The Insti­tute for Women’s Pol­i­cy Research’s advice on bet­ter sup­port­ing sin­gle par­ents includes the fol­low­ing:

• Using pub­lic fund­ing to incen­tivize com­mu­ni­ties and col­leges to increase degree attain­ment among sin­gle moth­ers and track progress toward that goal.
• Expand­ing state child care sub­sidy eli­gi­bil­i­ty rules to count high­er edu­ca­tion and train­ing toward work require­ments and include all degree types, includ­ing four-year degrees. 
• Strength­en­ing the links between ear­ly edu­ca­tion and high­er edu­ca­tion sys­tems to improve a student’s access to qual­i­ty child care. 
• Con­duct­ing rig­or­ous eval­u­a­tions of stu­dent par­ent sup­port and cam­pus child care pro­grams to bet­ter under­stand and iden­ti­fy best prac­tices and their impact on stu­dent par­ent per­sis­tence and com­ple­tion rates.
• Lever­ag­ing the phil­an­thropy sec­tor to help iden­ti­fy, eval­u­ate, and scale promis­ing, afford­able strate­gies for increas­ing col­lege suc­cess for sin­gle mothers.
• Pri­or­i­tiz­ing fam­i­ly-friend­ly cam­pus­es that cre­ate wel­com­ing, sup­port­ive col­lege envi­ron­ments for stu­dents with children.

One pow­er­ful exam­ple of these strate­gic sup­ports at work comes from Mon­roe Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege in Rochester, NY. The col­lege tracked on-time grad­u­a­tion rates for stu­dent par­ents who did use and did not use its on-cam­pus child care cen­ter. It found that stu­dent par­ents who used the on-cam­pus child care cen­ter had more than triple the on-time grad­u­a­tion rate when com­pared to stu­dent par­ents who did not use the center.

Regard­less of the spe­cif­ic strate­gies enact­ed, lead­ers and sys­tems devot­ed to fur­ther reduc­ing the nation’s teen birthrate should strive to adopt and advance data-informed, equi­table solu­tions that posi­tion all young peo­ple to succeed.