Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the preliminary figures for 2006 indicated that teen birth rate rose for the first time since 1991.  (See our December 10, 2007 posting).

Today, there is a news report about a new study indicating that sex education increases the chances that teens will delay having intercourse.  The study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that “male teens who received sex education in school were 71 percent less likely — and similarly educated female teens were 59 percent less likely — to have sexual intercourse before age 15.” The study also found that males who attended school were nearly three times more likely to use birth control the first time they had intercourse if they had been enrolled in sex-education classes.

The study, which used data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, sampled 2019 never-married males and females aged 15–19 years.  The study concluded that:

Formal sex education may effectively reduce adolescent sexual risk behaviors when provided before sexual initiation. Sex education was found to be particularly important for subgroups that are traditionally at high risk for early initiation of sex and for contracting sexually transmitted diseases.