Teenage Pregnancy

The data below are taken from the following sources: 

• Teenage Pregnancy year of conception, ending 31 December 2019 (published 06 July 2021) 

The overall teenage pregnancy rate is counted as the number of deliveries combined with the number of terminations. It does not include miscarriages. Available information is used to estimate age at the likely time of conception. The information presented here firstly details the overall teenage pregnancy rate, before describing in more detail, teenage pregnancy outcomes (delivery and termination rates). 

Teenage pregnancy rates are at the lowest level in Scotland since reporting began in 1994, with rates decreasing for the twelfth consecutive year from 29.6 per 1000 women aged under 20 in 2018, to 27.7 per 1000 women aged under 20 in 2019. This is a decrease of over 50% since 2007. Under 16s accounted for 5.7% of pregnancies and under 18s for 32.5%.

Numbers and rates of teenage pregnancy has reduced across all NHS Board areas over the last decade with the largest reduction in NHS Ayrshire and Arran (58.9 per 1,000 women in 2010 to 30.5 in 2019). In 2019, NHS Borders recorded the lowest overall rate of teenage pregnancy (21.7 per 1000), while NHS Fife recorded the highest rate (35.4 per 1000).

Overall, rates of teenage pregnancy have decreased across all levels of deprivation. However, young women living in areas of highest deprivation had four times higher teenage pregnancy rates than those in the least deprived areas in 2019 (52.6 compared to 11.8 per 1,000 women).

Teenage pregnancy outcomes

The decline in overall teenage pregnancy rates has occurred as a result of both termination and delivery rates falling. While the number and rates of both termination and delivery have decreased since 1994, delivery rates have fallen faster than termination rates.  The difference between delivery and termination rates has narrowed and in 2019, for the first time, termination rates amongst those under 20 (13.9 per 1000) were higher than delivery rates (13.8 per 1,000), with 50.3% of teenage pregnancies resulting in termination. Under 18s had a delivery rate of 6.7 and termination rate of 8.9 in 2019, compared to 8.3 and 8.6 in 2018. Under 16s had a delivery rate of 0.8 and a termination rate of 1.8 in 2019, compared to 1.1 and 1.6 in 2018.

While in the last decade the proportion of teenage women choosing to terminate their pregnancy rather than deliver has increased across all levels of deprivation, teenagers from the most deprived areas remain more likely to deliver than to terminate their pregnancy. In contrast, teenagers from the least deprived areas are more likely to terminate than to deliver. This difference in outcome of pregnancy between the most and least deprived has not changed in recent years. In 2019, the most deprived areas have just over 13 times the rate of delivery compared to the least deprived areas (31.6 per 1,000 women compared to 2.4 per 1,000 women), as well as over double the rate of termination (21.0 per 1,000 women compared to 9.4 per 1,000 women).

For more information on this topic, see teenage pregnancy page on the Public Health Scotland website

Please note: If you require the most up-to-date data available, please check the data sources directly as new data may have been published since these data pages were last updated. Although we endeavour to ensure that the data pages are kept up-to-date, there may be a time lag between new data being published and the relevant ScotPHO web pages being updated.