The next time your teen turns on MTV's "16 and Pregnant," avoid any disparaging remarks. The show may actually encourage him or her to practice safer sex, according to a new study. The study, released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, says "16 and Pregnant" ultimately led to a 5.7% reduction in teen births in the 18 months after its premiere on TV. This would account for about one-third of the overall decline in teen births in the United States during that period, researchers Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine concluded. In 2011, a total of 329,797 babies were born in the United States to girls between the ages of 15 and 19; that's a rate of 31.3 births per every 1,000 girls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC does not have rates available for 2012; Kearney and Levine say that number dropped to 29.4 per every 1,000 that year.
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MTV's "16 and Pregnant" may encourage teens to use birth control
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Teen births in the United States have been steadily declining since 1991
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Part of the decline can be attributed to the recession, expert says
Phillip Levine
Levine
"We were really curious as to what was going on," said Kearney, who has been studying teen pregnancy interventions alongside @placeholder for more than a decade.