Births To Teen Moms Have Plummeted In NYC, Statistics Show

NEW YORK — Don't expect a Big Apple edition of the TV series "Teen Mom" any time soon. Teen pregnancy has plummeted in New York City over the past decade, new health statistics show, following a national trend.

The city saw 13.8 births for every 1,000 girls and women aged 15 to 19 in 2017, marking a 56.2 percent drop in the teen birth rate from 2008, according to the Department of Health's annual vital statistics report released Monday.

That indicates teens in the five boroughs are giving birth less frequently than the nation as a whole.

More than 194,000 babies were born to 15-to-19-year-old mothers across the United States in 2017, giving the country a teen birth rate of 18.8 for every 1,000 girls and women that age, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That rate marked a record low and a 7 percent decrease from 2016.

The steady decline in the city's teen birth rate follows a similar pattern in the nationwide rate, CDC data show. The agency suggests that drops have occurred because more teens are avoiding sex and more of those who are sexually active are using birth control.

Teen pregnancies have dropped most sharply among the city's young African-American moms, Health Department figures show. The teen birth rate for black women and girls fell 58.2 percent from 2008 to 2017 to 14.8, slightly above the citywide rate.

Pregnancies appeared most common among Hispanic teens — that ethnic group had 22.9 births in 2017 for every 1,000 girls and women, nearly four times the rate of 5.9 births among white teens, the statistics show.

Big geographic disparities also remain. The Bronx is home to four of the five community districts with the city's highest percentages of births to teens, while six of the nine areas with the lowest percentages are tony Manhattan districts such as the Upper East Side, SoHo and Greenwich Village, the Health Department's report says.