Teen Pregnancies Fall to Lowest Rate in 70 Years

by Liz Colville

It’s true: in the 70 years that the National Center for Health Statistics has been keeping data on this particular stat, 2009 saw the lowest rate of teen births: 39.1 births per 1000 teens. But why? Teen Mom? Farmville? Angry Birds? Uncomfortable beds?

One expert’s take on this, and I’m word-for-word paraphrasing, is, “Well, during tough economic times, young people are maybe more cautious about adding more burden to their families, except, it’s not like young people are even responsible, so what the hell am I talking about, but maybe their parents are telling them, ‘Now we really need to save this year, so no babies,’ and maybe they are looking around and noticing that nobody in their neighborhood has jobs, which is optimistic of me to say, because do teens notice anything, really, that they don’t want to?”

A portion of what that expert did actually say:

Maybe part of tightening our belts includes keeping our zippers closed, too!