Understanding teenage fertility decline.

From their peak in the early 1990s births to 15-17-years-olds have dropped more than 40 percent; births to 18-19-year-olds have also dropped in this case more than 25 percent. In contrast over the same period births to 20-24-year-olds are approximately stable and births to older women (here defined as 30 and older) are rising rapidly (20 to 64 percent). There is a moderate-sized literature attempting to explain the fertility/pregnancy decline. Those papers include Kaufman et al. (1998) Jones et al. (1999) Saul (1999) Flanigan (2001) Terry-Huymen Manlove and Moore (2001) Mohn Tingle and Finger (2003) and Santelli et al. (2005). Most of those studies use the 1988 and 1995 NSFG but those data only included the beginning of the teenage fertility decline. Santelli et al. (2005) used more recent data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) but those data only include 15-19-year-olds in public high schools. The new 2002 NSFG data provide an opportunity to explore these issues using more current data and a unified approach. (excerpt)