Source: http://www.vox.com/2014/8/20/5987845/the...

We may have just gotten lucky.

It's not an especially scientific answer, but it's one that seems to describe how teen pregnancy researchers view the dramatic slowdown in the birth rate: a collision of lots of trends that all serendipitously happened in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

The recession, the uptick in IUD use, a hit MTV show that deglamorized teen pregnancy — each of these factors could have have caused a small decline on their own. Taken together, it's possible they caused a much bigger change.

And if that is the case, that doesn't portend especially well for the fast decline continuing. A few of the factors might: use of IUDs, for example, might continue to rise as the health care law eliminates co-pays for the contraceptive. Cost has often been a barrier to IUD use, as co-pays could range between $500 and $1,000.

The other particulars, however, seem less likely to forecast long-term change. The economy is recovering, and so is the birth rate among older women — it's possible that younger women could follow. Teen Mom stopped airing in 2012  (a Teen Mom 2 series still does exist) and 16 and Pregnant, which wrapped up its fifth season this year, doesn't deliver the blockbuster ratings it used to.

Researchers are waiting for the other shoe to drop: there's a general expectation that at some point the statistics have to turn around. "A 10 percent decline per year is not something that happens forever," said Levine. "I don't know that it's necessarily a bad thing if it goes back to the 2.5 percent declines we saw before."