Trends of teenage pregnancy in Brazil, 2000-2011

Abstract

Summary Objective: To evaluate the frequency of teenage pregnancy in Brazil, from 2000 to 2011, in all five Brazilian macroregions and age groups (10-14 and 15-19 years), correlating it with the human development index (HDI). Method: Descriptive epidemiological study, with cross-sectional design, performed by searching the database of the National Health System (Datasus), using information from the Information System (Sinasc). Results: There was a decrease in the percentage of live births (LB) from teenage mothers (10-19 years) in Brazil (23.5 % in 2000 to 19.2 % in 2011). This reduction was observed in all Brazilian macroregions in the group of mothers aged 15 to 19 years. The number of LB increased by 5.0% among mothers aged 10-14 years (increase in the North and Northeast and decline in the other macroregions). The proportion of LB shows an inversely proportional trend to HDI score, with the Southeast having the highest HDI and the lowest proportion of LB to teenage mothers in the country. Conclusion: Brazil shows a decline in the percentage of LB to adolescent mothers, tending to be inversely related to HDI score. It is important to empower strategies to address the problem, so that teenage pregnancy is seen as a personal decision rather than the result of a lack of policies targeting adolescent health.

Girls’ Empowerment and Adolescent Pregnancy: A Systematic Review

“…The United States of America (USA) and Kenya had two studies each [33][34][35][36] and the rest were conducted in Brazil, Canada, Nigeria, Nepal, and Sweden [37][38][39][40][41]. The distribution is relevant, as five of the nine studies were conducted in LMICs [35][36][37]39,40]. Of the nine articles, four were qualitative studies [33,35,38,41].…”

“…Two studies used repeated cross-sectional data [37,39]. One study involved a nationwide representative sample of Brazil, looking for association of socio-economic factors and trends of adolescent pregnancies [37]. This study found a drop in live births in adolescent mothers between 2000 to 2011.…”

“…High quality studies included two qualitative and one cross-sectional (repeated) [35,38,39]. A retrospective, one cross-sectional and one qualitative were judged as fair quality studies [37,40,41], while one mixed method, a prospective and a randomized control trial (RCT) were judged as poor quality studies [33,34,36]. All cross-sectional and cohort studies did not report pre-calculated sample estimations.…”

“…All cross-sectional and cohort studies did not report pre-calculated sample estimations. Other limitations were recruitment of subjects from different populations or period [36,40] and failure to ascertain exposure measurement before outcomes [37]. For qualitative studies, common limitations on quality were not reporting an appropriate qualitative method [33], recruitment strategy, ascertaining the relationship between researcher and participant [33,41] and not using proper data collection in a way to address the study objective [33,35].…”

Mortes maternas por aborto entre adolescentes no Piauí, Brasil

“…Although there has been a reduction in pregnancy rates in the last two decades, about 16 million adolescents aged 15-19 years and 2.5 million of those under 16 years of age give birth in developing countries 1 . In Brazil, there was a decrease of 17% in the number of pregnant teenagers between 2003 and 2015, however, 1 in 5 births is still of young people aged 19 or younger 2, 3 . The highest proportions are found among adolescents with low education, black women and residents in rural areas in the North and Northeast regions of the Country 4-6 .…”