BY ANUGRAH KUMAR, CHRISTIAN POST CONTRIBUTOR
June 1, 2014|5:43 am
The birth rate among American teens dropped last year to the lowest ever reported in the country, but the rate among older women rose, according to new federal statistics.

The birth rate for teens aged 15 to 19 dropped 10 percent to 26.6 births per 1,000 in 2013, a historic low for the nation, according to data released from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After a brief upturn in 2006 and 2007, the rate declined 36 percent since 2007, and 57 percent overall from 1991, the most recent peak, it says.

The number of births to teens also hit a new low.

The number of births to teenagers was 274,641 last year, also down 10 percent from the previous year and the lowest number of teen births ever reported for the United States. The number of births in 2013 was 38 percent fewer than in 2007, the most recent high, and 57 percent fewer than in 1970, the all-time peak year for the number of teen births.

Overall, 3,957,577 babies were born last year in the country, according to the data.

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"Certainly the drop in the teen birth rate is pretty astounding," Reuters quotes Carl Haub, senior demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, as saying.

The drop was likely due to educational efforts to prevent teen pregnancy and some economic factors as the rate began to fall dramatically during the recession that began in 2007, according to Haub.

"Young childbearing is becoming less and less accepted," The Wall Street Journal quotes Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute, as saying. She attributes it to contraception, wider education and a broader societal shift away from having children at a young age.

"The historic decline has been driven by the magic formula of less sex and more contraception," Bill Albert, chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, tells USA Today.

The data also shows that the birth rate for teenagers aged 10 to 14 was 0.3 births per 1,000 last year, down from 0.4 in 2012, an historic low. The number of births to mothers in this age group decreased 15 percent last year, to 3,108 births, the lowest number of births to this group ever reported for the nation.

However, birth rates among older women rose.

The birth rate for women aged 30 to 34 years was 98.7 births per 1,000 women in 2013, up 1 percent from the rate in 2012. The number of births to women in their early thirties also increased last year by 2 percent. The rate for women aged 35 to 39 years was 49.6 births per 1,000 women, up 3 percent from 2012, reaching the highest rate for this age group since 1963. The number of births to women in their late thirties increased 3 percent last year.

"We are going up the age ladder and have been for many, many years," adds Haub, indicating that women are perhaps opting to postpone childbirth to get higher education or establish themselves in their careers.