The proportion of US high school students who report having had sexual intercourse has decreased, especially among black and Hispanic students, researchers say.
“More work is needed to understand the causes of these decreases and to ensure they continue,” write Kathleen A. Ethier, PhD, and colleagues, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. They published their findings online January 4 in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports.
The overall proportion of high school students who reported having sex dropped from 46.8% to 41.2%.
People who start having sex early in life are more likely to have sex with many partners, not use condoms, catch sexually transmitted infections, and get pregnant, the researchers report.
Most teenagers start having sex in high school, with black students more likely to have had sexual intercourse than white students, they say. The proportion of those who have had sex increases with each year students are in high school.
From 1995 to 2005 the proportion of high school students who reported having had sex declined from 53.1% to 46.8%, but this change was not statistically significant.
To see whether any change took place after that, the researchers analyzed data from the CDC’s national Youth Risk Behavior Surveys. The survey was anonymous and voluntary. It included the question, “Have you ever had sexual intercourse?” Students completed the survey during one class period.
The overall change in the prevalence of having had sex was statistically significant (P = .0069).
The change resulted from a drop in reported sexual activity in 9th and 10th grades. The 9th grade rate decreased from 34.3% to 24.1%, and the rate in 10th grade decreased from 42.8% to 35.7%, both of which were statistically significant (P < .00001 for 9th grade and P = .0449 for 10th grade). The rates among 11th and 12th graders both dropped, but not significantly.
The proportion among white students dropped from 43.0% to 39.9%, but this was not significant (P = .3711). On the other hand, the drop among black students, from 67.6% to 48.5%, was significant (P < .00001), as was the change among Hispanics, from 51.0% to 42.5% (P = .0003).
Among males, the rate decreased from 47.9% to 43.2% (P = .0069) while among females it went from 45.7% to 39.2% (P = .0176).
Patterns were similar across the 29 states with data available; among these states, only North Dakota and Wyoming did not show a significant drop in the prevalence of sexual intercourse among high school students.
The researchers mention several “shifts in various influences” that could have affected these trends: technology and social media, requirements and funding for education, “innovations in and federal resources for human immunodeficiency virus infection,” sexually transmitted infections, and teen pregnancy prevention.
The researchers acknowledge several limitations in their research. First, the data apply only to those in high school. Second, the results depend on accurate reporting by the high school students.
Still, they write, the apparent drop in sexual intercourse among the youngest high school students is especially encouraging. And so is the sharp drop among black and Hispanic students, as previous studies have found them to have more sexual partners, use condoms less often, get pregnant more often, and catch more sexually transmitted infections than white students.
The researchers have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. Published online January 4, 2018. Full text
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