Teenage pregnancy and perinatal mortality

In the general population teenage pregnancies present an elevated rate of perinatal mortality compared with pregnancies of women in their twenties. In two large-scale university hospital studies (one American, one Danish), the teenage pregnancies showed lower perinatal mortality than those of any other age group. This article attempts to determine the origin of these differing results. A comparative analysis was conducted focusing on methodologies, subject characteristics, and treatment procedures involved in the two classes of studies, which involved representative populations and university hospital samples. The uniformly high quality medical treatment provided to all subjects in the university hospital samples contrasted with the uneven quality of treatment found in population studies constituted the most important difference. Since pregnant teenagers generally tend to be of lower socioeconomic status, they are likely to receive inferior medical care. It was argued that this factor could, to large extent, be responsible for the elevated mortality rates found in teenage pregnancies in representative populations.This study was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Grant Award Number 75-7-060, The Consequences of Family Structure and Maternal State for Child and Mother's Development, Birgitte R. Mednick, Principal Investigator.Received her Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1975. Current interests are interactions between biological and social variables.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska in 1955. Current interests are learning, instructional development, and the delivery of human services.Received his Ph.D. from the University of New Zealand in 1954. Current interests are interactions between biological and social variables.