CT teen pregnancy rates down

The rate of pregnancies among CT teens dropped to 22.9 per 1,000 girls in 2008, down from 23.1 the year before and 35.8 ten years before. CT’s rate has consistently been below the national average; our 2008 rate was the fourth lowest in the nation behind only MA, NH, and VT. The bad news is that racial and ethnic disparities among CT’s teens are very large. Non-Hispanic black teen girls in CT are 4.5 times more likely to be pregnant than whites and among Hispanics the rate is 8 times higher. Babies born to teen mothers are more likely to be preterm and low birthweight than babies born to mothers in their twenties.
Ellen Andrews