Percent of young people who have ever been pregnant or caused a pregnancy

Percent of young people who have ever been pregnant or caused a pregnancy

Percent of young people who have ever been pregnant or caused a pregnancy

Among young people (ages 10-24 years old), the percent of females who have ever been pregnant and the percent of males who have ever caused a pregnancy

This indicator is calculated as:

(# of females ages 10-24 who report having ever been pregnant/ Total # of  females surveyed) x 100

 or

(# of males ages 10-24  who report having ever caused a pregnancy/ Total # of males surveyed) x 100

Data Requirement(s):

Responses to survey questions asking whether female young people have ever been pregnant and whether male young people have ever caused someone to be pregnant

Evaluators may want to disaggregate by the following age ranges: 10-14, 15-19, and 20-24

Surveys of program participants or youth in the program‘s intended population

Many adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH) programs aim to reduce the number of pregnancies among young people. This indicator provides a simple proxy measure of the level or volume of preg­nancies among young people for use in assessing the impact of such programs.

Alternatively, evaluators can use a pregnancy rate (i.e., number of annual pregnancies per 1,000 women 15-19 years of age). Evaluators can calculate this alternative measure in the same manner as they calculate the age-specific fertility rate for adolescents (see the age-specific fertility rate indicator in the fertility section of this database), but they will base the calculation upon pregnancies in­stead of on live births.

In settings where sexual relations and pregnancy out­side of marriage are highly stigmatized, female respon­dents to surveys will likely under-report adolescent preg­nancies occurring outside of marriage. Responses by male adolescents may also be biased, but the direction of the bias is less certain. On the one hand, males who have had multiple casual sexual partners may be un­aware of pregnancies they caused. On the other hand, male adolescents may exaggerate their sexual prowess in surveys, and thus may over-report the number of preg­nancies they caused. Nevertheless, in most settings, the indicator provides a lower-bound estimate of the true percent of adolescents experiencing or causing preg­nancies.

Although AYSRH programs tend to view adolescent preg­nancies as a negative outcome, pregnancies occurring to young people are sometimes wanted. Some situations may provide economic and social benefits of pregnancy during adolescence. Thus, evaluators must interpret this indicator in conjunction with data on the “wanted“ sta­tus of pregnancies occurring to young people.

access, adolescent, safe motherhood (SM)

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