The number of conceptions to girls aged under 18 per 1,000 girls aged 15-17, aggregated into 3 yearly time periods.
Up until 2009 there were approximately 40,000 conceptions a year to teenagers under 18 in England. With teenage pregnancies in England and Wales now at the lowest level since records began, the UK nevertheless retains one of the highest rates of teenage births in Western Europe. The Teenage Pregnancy Strategy suggested three possible reasons for this: low expectations (1), a lack of accurate knowledge about contraception (2), and mixed messages from the adult world (3). Teenage pregnancy rates are known to be higher in the more deprived areas. Half of all under-18 conceptions occur in the most deprived 20% of wards. Teenage mothers are less likely to finish their education, less likely to find a good job, and more likely to end up bringing up their children solo and in poverty. Teenage parents tend to have poor ante-natal health, lower birth-weight babies and higher mortality rates among their infants. Their health and their children's are worse than average.
Legacy unique identifier: P01079