Adolescent Sexual Behavior
Overall, fewer high school students are choosing
to have sexual intercourse than in the past. The Alan
Guttmacher Institute (AGI) reported in 1999 that one
in five adolescents (ages fifteen to nineteen) had not
had intercourse. Yet, in 1999, 49.9 percent of teens
in grades nine through twelve reported ever having
had sexual intercourse, a decline from 54.1 percent
in 1991. According to the 1999 Youth Risk Behavior
Survey (YRBS), produced by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), black students
(71.2%) are about 50 percent more likely to be sexual-
ly experienced than Hispanic (54.1%) and white stu-
dents (45.1%). Older students (grades eleven and
twelve; 58.7%) were more likely to have had sex than
those in ninth and tenth grades (42.7%). Among male
and female students, 36.3 percent reported having
had sex within the previous three months with higher
percentages among black students (53%) and twelfth
graders (50.6%).
More than 8 percent of adolescent students
(grades nine through twelve) reported having had
sexual intercourse before age thirteen. According to
the 1999 YRBS, male students (12.2%) were almost
three times as likely as female students (4.4%) to have
had intercourse before age thirteen. Black students
were the most likely to have had sex by that age
(20.5%). Males in grades nine and ten also reported
initiating sex earlier than their eleventh and twelfth
grade peers.
Nationwide figures from the CDC show that 16.2
percent of students (grades nine through twelve) in
1999 reported having had four or more sexual part-
ners, a decline from 18.7 percent in 1991. More male
students (19.3%) reported multiple partners than fe-
male students (13.1%). Black students (34.4%) more
frequently reported sex with multiple partners than
Hispanic (16.6%) and white students (12.4%).
Underscoring the importance of contraception is
the reality that teens experience a disproportionate
share of STIs and unintended pregnancies. In the
1999 CDC survey, 58 percent of students in grades
nine through twelve reported that they or their part-
ner used a condom during last sexual intercourse. By
gender, 65.5 percent of males and 50.7 percent of fe-
males reported condom use. Black students (70%)
were more likely to report condom use than Hispan-
ics (55.2%) and whites (55%). From 1991 to 1999, the
percentage of teens (grades nine through twelve) that
used a condom at last intercourse increased from 46.2
percent to 58 percent. Concerning oral contracep-
tion, only 16.2 percent of students reported use of the
birth control pill before last sexual intercourse. Over-
all, white female students in grades eleven and twelve
reported the highest use of oral contraception. Yet
the 1995 National Survey of Adolescent Males re-
vealed that even adolescents who have successfully
used contraception do not use it consistently.Consequences of Adolescent Sexual
Behavior
One sexual encounter can lead to pregnancy or
an individual’s sexually transmitted infection. AGI
finds that every time a teenage woman has sex she has
a 1 percent risk of contracting human immunodefi-
ciency virus (HIV), a 30 percent risk of contracting
genital herpes, and a 50 percent risk of contracting
gonorrhea. The U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services (DHHS) reports that although ado-
lescents (ages fifteen to nineteen) represent less than
16 percent of the population of reproductive age
(ages fourteen to forty-four), youth account for almost
27 percent of new STI infections (4 million of 15 mil-
lion new STIs). Based on the 1999 YRBS, female ado-
lescents (ages fifteen to nineteen) had the highest rate
of chlamydia (about 2,484 per 100,000) and gonor-
rhea infection (534 cases per 100,000) among all U.S.
women (404.5 cases per 100,000 and 130 cases per
100,000, respectively).
Sherry Murphy reported that in the United States
in 1998, HIV infection was the ninth leading cause of
death among persons fifteen to twenty-four years of
age. Using YRBS data, the CDC found that although
the national number of acquired immunodeficiency
syndrome (AIDS) cases diagnosed annually had de-
clined, changes in infection rates among individuals
aged thirteen to twenty-four had not followed the
same downward trend. By 1999 more than 800 youth
(ages thirteen to nineteen) had been diagnosed with
AIDS. Adolescent females (64%) and black youth
(56%) represented a greater proportion of those diag-
nosed. Sexually active teenagers face an increased
risk for STIs because they often are unable or reluc-
tant to obtain education, birth control, and services
for infection screening and treatment.
Among the world’s developed countries, the
United States has one of the highest teen pregnancy
rates—double the rate of France and nine times that
of the Netherlands and Japan. In 1994 teenagers
aged fifteen to eighteen experienced the highest per-
centage of unintended pregnancies (71.1%), more
than twice that of people aged thirty to thirty-four
(33%). According to 1999 YRBS data, 6.3 percent of
all sexually active students reported a pregnancy or
impregnation of a partner. Female students in grades
eleven and twelve (8.1% and 13.8%, respectively) were
significantly more likely to have been pregnant than
females in lower grades (4.8%). By race, black stu-360 SEXUAL ACTIVITY