Literature Review: Why is the Teen Birth Rate in the United States So High and Why Does It Matter?

 “Why is the Teen Birth Rate in the United States So High and Why Does It Matter?” is journal article written by Kearney, M. S., & Levine, P. B. (2012). This journal focuses on factors affecting the increasing rate of teenage pregnancy and discusses why does this social dilemma is important. This social issue has been making noises since 1960s and even until today. In this article, the authors presented a study that shows that teens in the US are 10% less sexually active as compared to other western countries but 15% higher when it comes to not using protection including contraceptives. Because of this, the probability of early childbearing is higher even for a fact that they are not sexually active.

Upon reflecting on the whole article, the study is vey important because of several reasons and few of which are poverty, mental and physical health, over population, lack of education and broken family. Teens from poverty are likely to be sexually active and are not able to afford protection which results to pregnancy. Because this may result to raising a child living a poor social status, abortion and other physical health conditions may increase and therefore this makes the study crucial and important. While there are several factors supporting the study’s claim to be important, it is very important that we all understand that this is a real problem and that the consequences will remain long-term and so educating our new generation is very important.

Reference:

Kearney, M. S., & Levine, P. B. (2012). Why is the Teen Birth Rate in the United States So High and Why Does It Matter? The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 26(2), 141–166. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41495308