New research published in the South African Medical Journal found adolescent birth rates dropped 16 across all nine provinces between April 2021 and March 2025 reversing a worrying upward trend identified in a 2022 analysis.
The steepest decline was among girls aged 10 to 14, whose birth rates fell by nearly 40.
Despite the good news about dropping rates, South Africas adolescent pregnancy rate remains more than five times the global high-income country average. And researchers cannot yet explain whats driving the decline.
Intodays newsletter, Tanya Pampalone looks at South Africas declining adolescent birth rate.Sign up for our newsletter today.
When public health researcher Peter Barron and his team sat down to update their 2022 analysis which had found birth rates among teenagers climbing year on year in every province they expected a straightforward exercise.
Instead, the researchers were left scratching their heads. The rates of births by girls aged 10 to 19 declined every year, in every province, reversing the worrying trend their 2022 work showed. Dramatically.
