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"Births: Preliminary Data for 2008," based on an analysis of 99.9 percent of birth records for 2008, found there were 41.5 births per 1,000 teenagers aged 15-19 years, down from 42.5 in 2007 and 41.9 in 2006.
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There was also a significant decline in the percentage of babies born preterm in 2008 (prior to 37 weeks of pregnancy). The preterm birth rate declined from 12.7 in 2007 to 12.3 in 2008. This marks the second straight year of decline in the preterm birth rate following a 20 percent increase between 1990 and 2006.
Other findings include:
The full report is available at www.cdc.gov/nchs.
-- The preliminary number of U.S. births in 2008 was 4,251,095, down nearly 2 percent from the preliminary number in 2007, which was an all-time high of 4,317,119.
SOURCE CDC National Center for Health Statistics
