Adolescent Pregnancy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Technical brief, August 2020

Abstract

Adolescent pregnancy profoundly affects girls’ life trajectories. It hampers their psychosocial development, contributes to poor health outcomes for the girls and their offspring, negatively affects their educational and employment opportunities, and contributes to the perpetuation of intergenerational cycles of poor health and poverty. Despite recent socioeconomic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), adolescent fertility rates in the region remain unacceptably high—the second highest in the world—with major inequities between and within countries.