Teenage Pregnancy

Summary

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More or Less – Teenage Pregnancy

Host: Ruth Alexander (with Charlotte MacDonald)
Date: November 29, 2014
Theme: Examining the veracity and context of frequently cited statistics—focusing in this episode on rates of teenage pregnancy in the US, reasons for decline, international comparison, and a segment debunking the “93% nonverbal communication” myth.

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Overview

This episode of More or Less critically investigates the claim, famously repeated in news media, that "one third of American girls become pregnant as teenagers." The team breaks down where the number originates, checks the latest available data, and discusses the social, behavioral, and cultural shifts behind declining teen pregnancy rates in the US. The second segment tackles another popular statistic: that 93% of communication is nonverbal, clarifying its origins and misuse.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Investigating the "One Third" Teenage Pregnancy Statistic

• Source of the Statistic (00:19-00:47)

  • Charlotte MacDonald flags the claim from a New York Times article ("about one third of American girls become pregnant as teenagers") as implausibly high.
  • Ruth Alexander traces the citation to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, based on 2006 data.

• Has the Number Changed? (01:15-01:58)

  • Bill Albert of the National Campaign confirms a major decline:

    “Teen pregnancy and birth rates in the US have been declining almost without interruptions for two decades now, both down better than 50% nationally.”
    (Bill Albert, 01:33)

  • Using 2010 data, the risk drops to "less than 1 in 4"; by 2013, evidence points to a further drop, possibly to "1 in 5" American girls (01:19-02:29).

2. Causes of Declining Teen Pregnancy (03:05-04:47)

• Role of Contraceptives

  • Heather Boonstra, Guttmacher Institute:

    “Overwhelmingly, [the decline] is due to better contraceptive use.”
    (Heather Boonstra, 03:14)

• Sexual Norms & AIDS Epidemic (03:40-04:11)

  • Norms around later marriages and greater condom use post-AIDS crisis contribute.
  • Social expectation shifts mean a longer gap between becoming sexually active and wanting children.

• Sex Education’s Impact (04:11-04:47)

  • Positive correlation: more contraceptive use and fewer partners where sex education is stronger.
  • BUT, as declines occurred nationwide—despite varied education policies—other broad factors are also at play.

• Pop Culture Influence:

  • The possible effects (positive or negative) of reality shows like 16 and Pregnant are debated but inconclusive.

3. How Does the US Compare Internationally? (05:07-05:12)

• Despite sharp declines, the US still has higher teen birth rates than Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Success in Reducing Teen Pregnancy:

  “Truly one of the US’s great success stories.” (Bill Albert, 01:33)

• On Improved Contraceptive Use:

  “Overwhelmingly it's due to better contraceptive use.” (Heather Boonstra, 03:14)

• On Misquoted Statistics:

  “Absolutely not. It should be so obvious to anybody who would use any amount of common sense that that's not a correct statement.”
  (Dr. Albert Mehrabian, 06:03 – on 93% nonverbal claim)

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:19 – 01:15: Tracing the “one third” statistic’s origin and context
• 01:15 – 03:05: Updated figures and trends with Bill Albert
• 03:07 – 04:47: Behavioral, social, and educational causes for falling teen pregnancy (Heather Boonstra)
• 04:47 – 05:12: International comparison
• 06:03 – 08:58: Debunking the “93% of communication is nonverbal” statistic (Tim Harford and Dr. Mehrabian)

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Debunking the “93% Nonverbal Communication” Statistic

• Clarification of Original Research (06:03–08:43)

  • Dr. Albert Mehrabian explains:

    “Absolutely not ... That's not a correct statement.” (06:03)

    • His research was about conveying emotions, not general communication.
    • Facial and vocal cues outweigh word choice only when the message is ambiguous or contradicted by delivery.

• Breakdown of Study (07:11–08:43)

  • Studied positive, neutral, and negative words delivered with varied vocal and facial expressions.
  • The 93% figure results from how emotion in ambiguous messages is interpreted, NOT general communication.

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Teenage pregnancy rates in the US have dropped precipitously, now likely below 20%, not the overstated "one third."
• The decline is driven mainly by improved contraceptive use and shifting social norms, rather than just sex ed programs.
• Despite progress, the US rate remains higher than peer nations.
• Be wary of statistical claims—especially the widely misquoted “93% nonverbal” communication figure, which only applies in very narrow contexts.

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Summary prepared for listeners seeking the substance of the episode, skipping promotional and non-content segments. For concerns about dubious numbers, the More or Less team welcomes listener emails.

Transcript

[A]

This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

[B]

Thank you for downloading from the BBC. For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to bbcworldservice.com podcasts

[A]

hello, this is More or Less on the BBC World Service and I'm Ruth Alexander and I'm joined Today by Charlotte MacDonald. And Charlotte, you're with me because you've seen a number in the press that you just think is a bit strange.

[C]

Hello Ruth. Yes, the opening paragraph of an article in the New York Times said about one third of American girls become pregnant as teenagers. And my first instinct was that it seemed to be a staggeringly high amount. And that's why I wanted you, my wonderful colleagues at More or Less, to find out whether it's true.

[A]

Charlotte, for you, anything. So I've looked at this opinion piece in the New York Times written by Nicholas Kristof, and helpfully he did link to his Source. So that 1 in 3 figure you mentioned, it was from a non profit organization in the US called the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Now they calculated the cumulative risk of a teenager becoming pregnant once between the ages of 15 and 19, and they were using data from 2006.

[C]

Alright, so it was correct in 2006, but is it correct now?

[A]

Well, that's what we wondered because I mean, there are good reasons, aren't there, to think that numbers might have fallen since 2006? I mean, that was eight years ago. So here's what the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies Chief Programme Officer Bill Albert said when we spoke to him.

[D]

Teen pregnancy and birth rates in the US have been declining almost without interruptions for two decades now, both down better than 50% nationally. They are down in all 50 states, they're down among all racial and ethnic groups. Truly one of the US's great success stories.

[C]

Okay, so it's not one third of American teenage girls anymore. So what is the right answer?

[A]

Well, we've used the same method, but using the latest set of complete data, which is from 2010, and that puts the figure much lower, less than 1 in 4. However, there's some more recent data that suggests it could be even lower than that. Now remember, this is pregnancy. So the sum of teenagers who gave birth, had abortions and who had a miscarriage. Now we don't have the abortion data, but we do have the US teenage birth rate for 2013, which shows that since 2010 there's been a 22% drop. 22%.

[C]

That is big.

[A]

It is, yeah. And unless there's been a huge change in the abortion trend, we think the rate of American teenage girls becoming pregnant could have gone down too. One in five. And we asked Bill Albert if he agrees with us that it's likely rates of teenage pregnancy could have dropped again.

[D]

Historically, the teen pregnancy rate and the teen birth rate tend to track together. Based on what we know about the teen birth patterns between 2010 and 2013, I think it is almost certain that the teen pregnancy data will closely track with that and will have declined in the past three, four years as well.

[C]

Well, what's behind this trend?

[A]

That's a question we put to Heather Bonestra from the Guttmacher Institute in the us, a non government organisation that's been looking into precisely this.

[E]

Teen pregnancy drops in one of two ways. Either teens are having less sex overall or the teens who are sexually active are using contraceptives and using them better over time. And what we have found, you know, looking back at just these two behaviors, that overwhelmingly it's due to better contraceptive use.

[A]

So why are teenagers changing their behaviour? Well, Heather said there are a number of reasons.

[E]

One of them I think that there's a strong case for is the AIDS epidemic. I think it really brought condoms back into popularity. The other types of changes we've had also have to do with norms just around childbearing itself. In many developed countries, people wait longer to get married, and so there's this larger gap between when you become sexually active, when you may not want to become pregnant.

[C]

What about sex education in schools? Surely that's a factor.

[E]

These programs have been shown to increase teens contraceptive use, lower the number of partners that they have. All of that is very positive. The one piece of the puzzle, though, is that these declines have happened across all 50 states. Different states and different school districts have different policies about their sex education programs. There's a lot more that's going on here because otherwise we would have seen variations across the nation.

[A]

There's also been conflicting research about the influence of TV reality shows such as MTV's 16 and Pregnant. I didn't choose to get pregnant at this age, Mom.

[E]

I didn't plan it. You're not ready to be a father. You're not even ready to be an adult.

[A]

And whether it puts teenage girls off getting pregnant or glamorizes it, there's clearly

[C]

been a significant decline in teenage pregnancy throughout the us. But how does it compare to other countries?

[A]

There's the catch. While the US has far fewer teenagers getting pregnant than it did 20 years ago. Its teenagers still have babies at a much higher rate than in other rich countries like Australia, New Zealand and those in Western Europe. Charlotte, thank you for asking us to look into that. You're listening to more or less on the BBC World Service with me, Ruth Alexander. Now, there's one often quoted statement that we get asked to look into fairly regularly. And that is, is 93% of communication non verbal? The answer to that is as true now as it was five years ago when Tim Harford interviewed Dr. Albert Mehrabian, whose research in 1968 is the source of that claim. Now, Tim started by asking him, is it true that that 93% of communication is non verbal?

[F]

Absolutely not. It should be so obvious to anybody who would use any amount of common sense that that's not a correct statement. If I were to try to tell you that the pencil you are looking for is upstairs in the desk drawer of the bedroom, three drawers down, I couldn't do that non verbally. I mean, I could try to point, but that would hardly locate the pencil. Whereas I could do that very precisely with words.

[G]

What was the actual experiment that you carried out?

[F]

The very first stage of the study was to select a number of words that would clearly communicate positive feeling by themselves. Neutral words and then negative words. Then we had speakers say those words attempting to communicate liking, attempting to communicate a neutral feeling, and finally trying to communicate a negative feeling.

[G]

So somebody might say brute, but affectionately.

[F]

Yes, exactly. And it turned out that when there was a contradiction between the words and the vocal elements, the vocal elements prevailed primarily and very strongly and the words had hardly any impact. And the variance was 5.4 times larger for the vocal elements than for the words. In a subsequent study, I compared the vocal elements with facial expressions. Now, in that study, I was able to show very clearly that the facial expressions were one and a half times more powerful than the vocal elements. And I expressed this as an equation. Combining the results of the first and the second studies, I was able to arrive at the linear components for content, vocal expression and facial expression. And that's the formula that people have

[G]

been quoting, because from your research you know that the vocal element is about five and a half times more important than the word. So that's 7% versus 38%. And then.

[F]

Correct.

[G]

We know the facial expression is one and a half times more important than the vocal element. So that's the 38% versus the 55% used to scale it all up.

[F]

Exactly.

[G]

You were asking a very focused question about the expression of an emotion.

[F]

Absolutely. There's just no question that you cannot extrapolate my findings to communication in General.

[A]

That was Dr. Albert Mehravian talking to Tim Harford. And that's all we've got time for this week. But if you've got any numbers you're suspicious about, please email [e-mail] and you can also listen to more editions of More or Less at our website, bbcworldservice.com moreorless

[B]

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