As a nation, we deserve to be proud of these encouraging trends. But even limited success can have a downside if it means that the public and the media begin to believe that the teen pregnancy problem has been solved. The U.S. still leads the industrialized world in teen pregnancy and birth rates by a wide margin. In fact, the U.S. rates are double, triple, even ten times those of other western countries, which puts us at a terrible competitive disadvantage in the global economy.
Teen pregnancy costs society billions of dollars a year.
There are nearly half a million children born to teen mothers each year. Most of these mothers are unmarried, and many will end up poor and on welfare. Too many children start school unprepared to learn, and teachers are overwhelmed trying to deal with problems that start in the home. Forty-five percent of first births in the United States are to women who are either unmarried, teenagers, or lacking a high school degree, which means that too many children tomorrow's workers are born into families that are not prepared to help them succeed. In addition, teen mothers often do not finish high school themselves.