Birth Rates for Teens and Adults
According to the United Nations report World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision: Highlights (http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2002/WPP2002-HIGHLIGHTSrev1.PDF), in 2000 there were 2.7 births per woman, but there were great regional differences. Fertility rates were far lower in developed nations than in developing countries. The forty-nine least-developed countries had a fertility rate of 5.46 children per woman, well above the global population replacement rate of 2.3. In the most developed regions the total fertility rate was 1.58 children per woman, well below the population replacement rate for developed countries of 2.1. In these countries more people died each year than new children were born; their populations were either declining or would have been declining if not for immigration from other countries.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Global Population Profile, a few regions contribute most of the world's population increase. Of the 128.6 million babies born in 2002, one of every three was born either in India (24.6 million) or mainland China (17.2 million). Another one-third of the globe's babies were born in the rest of Asia (43.5 million). More than 26.5 million babies were born in sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 11.3 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 8.5 million in the Near East and North Africa. Figure 10.3 shows the contributors to world population by region and the proportion of growth attributable to the largest contributors in each region. According to the United Nations report, World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision, by about 2050, fertility levels in the majority of developing countries are expected to fall below the population replacement rate.
Globally, the period of adolescence is lengthening. Girls are reaching puberty at a younger age at the same time that the age of marriage is rising. Thus, young people face a longer period of time during which they are sexually mature and may be sexually active. Many youths are postponing marriage to stay in school or for socioeconomic reasons. As a consequence, many first pregnancies and first births occur outside of marriage.
The UN predicts that between 2000 and 2005 about thirteen million babies will be born worldwide to young women fifteen to nineteen years old. About 9.5 of ten of these babies (12.8 million) will be born in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The proportion of teens having a child by the age of twenty in these regions is high—around 50% in West Africa and South-Central Asia, and one-third in Latin America. The UN reported that in sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent females (aged fifteen to nineteen) had a fertility rate in 2002 of 116 births per one thousand women, far higher than in any other region of the world. The number of adolescent women capable of bearing children was projected to increase in the less developed countries between 1998 and 2025. Because childbearing among older women has declined more rapidly than among teens, a larger proportion of all births now occur among adolescents.
Among developed countries the United States has the highest rate of teen childbearing. According to the UN, the five countries with the lowest teenage birth rates are Korea, Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden; all have teen birth rates of fewer than seven per one thousand.
Young women are more likely than mature women to have pregnancy-related complications that can endanger
FIGURE 10.2
FIGURE 10.3
their lives or lead to infertility. Maternal mortality rates for women fifteen to nineteen may be double those of older women, and young women are also more likely to consider unsafe late-term abortions as an alternative to carrying a pregnancy to term.
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