U.S. Teenage Birthrate Tops Industrial Nations

By Jessica Portner

Clinton Administration officials have hailed the recently reported five-year drop in the teenage birthrate as a national achievement. They have cited better contraceptive use and abstinence education as proof that school and community-based approaches thwart childbearing by teenagers.

But a sobering fact was buried in all the hubbub over the nation's accomplishment: By far, the United States still has the highest teenage birthrate in the industrialized world.

In 1995, there were 57 births per 1,000 15- to 19-year-old women in the United States. That is twice Britain's rate, five times Germany's, and 14 times Japan's, according to a report released last week by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a New York...