Teenage Fertility in Developed Nations: 1971-1980

Abstract

Trends and variations in teenage fertility during the 1970s have been examined for 32 developed country populations using data assembled by the Institut National dEtudes Demographiques. Most of the Western countries examined had either a low or moderate level of adolescent fertility at the beginning of the 70s and experienced a slight or moderate decline through the decade. In about half of these countries the declines have been slightly greater than those for overall fertility. In contrast the countries in eastern and southern Europe experienced increases in teenage fertility while total fertility remained stationary or declined. The extreme cases in teenage fertility are blacks in the U.S. who have a very high (though declining) rate that accounts for 1/4 of all black childbearing and the Japanese who have an almost negligible fertility rate which represents 1% of Japans total fertility. Fertility among black U.S. teenagers and among Arab teenagers living in Israel stands out distinctly from the fertility of white U.S. adolescents and Jewish Israelis; the former have twice as many children on average as their counterparts by the time they complete their teen years. The teenage fertility rate in the U.S. is declining but is still quite high by international standards. Although this is partly due to the exceptionally high rate of fertility among black adolescents the fertility of white teenagers is also considerably higher than that of teenagers in most Western countries. The analysis shows that almost half of all childbearing among black U.S. teenagers occurs before age 18; this is the largest such proportion in the 32 populations studied. The lowest incidence of early adolescent fertility is found in Japan. A comparison of time trends in the fertility of the younger and older teenagers reveals that the 2 paths are very close to parallel. (authors modified)