Teen Pregnancy Affects Educational Achievement
High School Completion
Teen pregnancy and parenting are significant contributors to high school drop-out rates among teen girls. Thirty percent of teenage girls who drop out of high school cite pregnancy or parenthood as a primary reason. This rate is even higher for Hispanic and African American teens, 36 and 38 percent, respectively. Overall, only 40 percent of teen moms finish high school and less than two percent—of those who have a baby before age 18—finish college by age 30.
Intergenerational Impact: Children of Teen Parents
The mother’s education is not the only victim of teen childbearing; children born to teen moms often do not perform as well as children of older mothers on early childhood development indicators and school readiness measures, such as communication, cognition and social skills. Research shows that children of teen mothers not only start school at a disadvantage, they also fare worse than those born to older parents later on. For example, children born to teens have lower educational performance, score lower on standardized tests, and are twice as likely to repeat a grade. Additionally, only around two-thirds of children born to teen mothers earn a high school diploma, compared to 81 percent of children born to adults.
Older Teens & Community College
The pregnancy rate for women aged 18 to 19 is three times higher than that of younger teens and the birth rate for older adolescents is more than three and a half times that of their younger peers. Older teens account for nearly 500,000 pregnancies and 234,000 births each year. Nearly 25 percent of births to women in this age group are teens who have previously given birth, greatly increasing the challenges for these mothers and their children. With almost 70 percent of 18- and 19-year-olds attending either high school or college, unplanned pregnancies can disrupt or derail educational achievement. Sixty-one percent of women who have children after enrolling in college fail to complete their degree, a rate which is 65 percent higher than that for students who did not have children. In addition, surveys indicate that close to half of all community college students have been pregnant or gotten someone pregnant at some point