The Brief

The teenage birth rate in the U.S. fell by 7% in 2025, continuing decades of decline, according to a report published Thursday by the National Center for Health Statistics.

"A 7% decline is really quite extraordinary," says the report's lead author, Brady Hamilton, a statistician demographer with the center, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall, nearly 126,000 babies were born to mothers ages 15 to 19, according to the analysis of provisional data. The birth rate for that age group was 11.7 births per 1,000 females. By contrast, the teen birth rate in 1991 was 61.8 births per 1,000.

The report also explored other topics related to births in the United States. The overall birth rate fell 1% from the previous year, also continuing a long decline. The rate of preterm births was unchanged. And the cesarean delivery rate increased to 32.5% in 2025, which is the highest rate since 2013, continuing a slight upward trend.

Notably, the provisional report does not include an analysis of births by the mother's race or ethnicity, even though those were included in this report in the last few years. CDC told NPR in a statement that this year's report is "covering fewer topics than previous provisional birth reports," but also that race data is still available on CDC's WONDER online database.

This provisional report comes out every year in the spring based on more than 99% of registered births for the previous year. "It gives us basically a sneak peek at some key factors that we can expect when we get the final data for that year," Hamilton says. The final data is usually published in August.

The harder "why" question

While birth certificates provide a great deal of demographic, geographic and other kinds of detail about a birth, "the birth certificate does not allow us to address the question of why," Hamilton says.

Many factors are driving the 35-year decline in teen birth rates, says Bianca Allison, pediatrician and associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

"What is actually affecting the birth rates are likely lower rates of teen pregnancy overall, which is in the context of higher use of contraception and lower sexual activity for youth, and then also continued access to abortion care," she says.

While there has been a lot of concern about the declining general birth rate in the U.S., the decline in teen births is harder to parse as a good or bad news story.

"I think it depends on who you're talking to and how they're positioned and looking at the data," says Allison, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, an advocacy group that favors abortion rights and supports health equity. "From my perspective, as somebody who specifically studies the provision of high-quality reproductive health care and access for young people, this should be celebrated as long as this is aligned with what people are actually wanting for themselves."

She adds that there are a lot of negative narratives associated with teen parenthood in terms of educational and career potential. "Many of those outcomes are due to the lack of societal, institutional and systemic supports that young people receive to parent, not their lack of ability to parent," she argues.

She hopes that the declining teen birth rate doesn't make people think this issue is gone. "We cannot get our foot off the gas pedal of continuing to invest in supports" for teen parents to help them reach their goals. They need educational, social and medical help to thrive, she says: "All those things are incredibly important."
Copyright 2026 NPR

The man who has helped produce the Super Bowl halftime show is stepping into the spotlight: Jay-Z will headline the show himself.

The NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced Monday night that Jay-Z will be the featured performer for the halftime festivities on Feb. 14 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he had one request when the league first reached an agreement with Roc Nation: that Jay-Z take the stage himself “whenever the moment felt right to him.”

“From ‘Reasonable Doubt’ to standing on the Super Bowl halftime stage, this has been a journey,” Jay-Z said in a statement. “Thirty years of music, work, and culture on the world’s biggest stage. This run continues to be a dream come true.”

After days of speculation, Jay-Z is set to return to the stadium where he closed his celebration of the 30th anniversary of “Reasonable Doubt,” the mogul’s 1996 debut album. The concerts included three sold-out shows at Yankee Stadium and sold-out performances in London and Paris ahead of a stop at SoFi Stadium over the weekend.

Jay-Z’s Roc Nation has partnered with the NFL since 2019 to advise on and help produce the league’s entertainment presentations, including the Super Bowl halftime show. At the time, Jay-Z said he had told Goodell, “If this is about me performing at the Super Bowl, then we can just end this conversation now.”

Seven years later, Jay-Z is ready to perform after all.

Jay-Z, born Shawn Carter, has won 25 Grammy Awards and received 89 nominations, the second-most in history behind his wife, Beyoncé — who has performed at two Super Bowls. His catalog also includes the albums “The Blueprint” and “The Black Album,” and hit songs such as “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem),” “99 Problems” and “Empire State of Mind,” his collaboration with Alicia Keys.

Last year, “Reasonable Doubt” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Are you a Los Angeles County resident? What county programs and services do you find most valuable as the county heads into its fiscal year 2027-2028 budget? 

L.A. County is seeking residents’ input on what services should be prioritized, what programs should be cut and how else officials should be spending money through a series of short online surveys, open now through Saturday, Oct. 31. 

In each of the surveys, residents can weigh in on any of the county’s 39 programs, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Public Health and Youth Development, or fill out the countywide questionnaire. 

Survey responses are anonymous, unless respondents choose to share their contact information, and will be reviewed by the departments to inform their budget planning for fiscal year 2027-2028, which starts in July. The county’s 2027-28 budget recommendations will be presented to the Board of Supervisors in April.

“The County’s budget reflects its values. Our overarching goal in building the budget, especially during challenging times, is to ensure that we are maintaining safety net services and meeting the most essential needs of our communities,” L.A. County’s Chief Executive Officer Joseph M. Nicchitta said in a statement. “That includes everything from health and mental health care to making sure elections are secure and transparent, from emergency operations to supporting our justice system. Getting a broad view of how the public thinks about and values these services is an important part of the County’s work.”

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors oversees how the county serves its nearly 10 million residents; it’s one of the largest county governments in the country. Last month, the Board of Supervisors approved its final $54.2 billion budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year to prioritize housing and safety net services, wildfire recovery, emergency preparedness and civic engagement, among other things.

How to weigh in

Take the survey: ceo.lacounty.gov/surveys/

Deadline: Saturday, Oct. 31

The post How should LA County spend its multibillion-dollar budget? Weigh in by Saturday appeared first on LA Local.

A pair of Los Angeles County engineers knocked on my door a couple of weeks ago and handed me a booklet about how to prepare for flooding and mudflows. They also told me they offer free, specific engineering advice for individual properties.

I was definitely interested in this — I live in a neighborhood affected by the Eaton Fire, and the house I rent is tucked right against a steep hillside with vegetation that burned.

A few days later, two engineers, as well as the county’s public information officer, showed up at my door.

Eden Ly, a civil engineer with the county, looked up at the mountainside looming above my house.

“This mountainside is very steep, and that's the scary part,” Ly said.

The more recent the burn scar, the steeper the hillside and the closer your house is to it, the bigger the danger. The good thing, Ly said, is that much of the vegetation looked pretty recovered from the fire, so the roots should hold onto the dirt. And the property has a retaining wall that Ly said looks solid.

L.A. County civil engineer Eden Ly, right, assesses a retaining wall behind the house of reporter Erin Stone in a neighborhood affected by a recent wildfire.

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Kerjon Lee

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L.A. County Department of Public Works

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Before coming to do a scheduled assessment of a resident’s property, Ly said he and his team analyze all kinds of data to understand how water — and thus mud and debris — may flow there.

“This will include a lot of geospatial information, a lot of mapping, such as topography,” Ly said. It also includes, Ly said, historical rain gauge data to understand how intense rain tends to be in different areas, soil types and more.

So far this season, Ly and his team have knocked on the doors of over 700 homes — 233 homeowners have received walk-through assessments of their properties, said Kerjon Lee, a spokesperson for the county’s Public Works Department.

“A lot of this data isn't public,” Ly said. "And even if it was public, how is the average Joe going to be able to understand what's going on? So our job is to try to bridge that gap.”

By Ly’s analysis, the terrain above my place is gravelly and muddy, not big boulders that can tear through a house. So if the hill does slide, we should be spared something like the deadly mudslides Montecito experienced in 2018, after the Thomas Fire.

“It's more of that kind of mud flow, that mud river that is more the concern in this case,” Ly said.

He suggests various areas to strategically place plywood planks and sandbags. I’m a renter, so there’s not much else I can do.

What if I have to leave?

Then Ly pointed to a weak spot that could lead to mud flowing where we park our cars.

“Heavy storm; we will probably recommend you try not to be there,” he said.

In a strong storm like that, I expect my neighborhood will get evacuation warnings — at least.

This winter, warnings or even orders to leave could become common.

Half an inch of rainfall in less than an hour — or more than 3 to 4 inches in a day — can trigger debris flows after a recent wildfire.

But that’s just a rule of thumb. As bare dirt becomes more saturated with back-to-back storms, less intense rainfall can be a trigger. So in addition to the engineering assessment and prep work, paying attention to forecasts and knowing how water flows where you live is key.

“Our best advice is that you try to deflect and guide everything,” Ly said. But “it's Mother Nature; you can't stop it.”

Talk to neighbors

Overall, Ly tells me the swales my landlord built behind the house, and those my neighbors built, look like they’ll direct water and mud to the street, which is generally the goal.

And that’s another piece of advice he gives — talk to my longtime neighbors, who have been through a storm or a few.

Ly tells me his team will email a more detailed report once they dig into a little more data. That’s part of the free service for higher-risk homes.

In addition to the plans I’ve got for our pets, important medications, possessions and other things I'll need if we have to evacuate, the county's assessment left me with valuable advice — and a little less anxiety too.

Genny Richard constantly thinks about her family’s finances.

“The stress level has been immense,” she said. “Because childcare is our largest expense, that's been a big part of the reason.”

Her 5-year-old son is in his third year at a full-time Montessori school in Irvine. It costs her family $2,020 a month — more than their rent. They don’t have family nearby to help with childcare.

“We definitely had to start severely restricting our budget because of that cost,” Richard said. “We hardly eat out … we are part of a community garden, so we grow whatever vegetables we can on our own. … We only have one car.”

They’re also staying put in their two-bedroom apartment, which is offered through UC Irvine, as they expand their family; Richard is due next month. “We’re probably in a smaller apartment than we actually need, especially with a baby on the way,” Richard said.

Still, the bills began to pile up. Expenses like an unexpected trip to urgent care for an ear infection and Richard’s bout of pneumonia forced them to start putting costs onto their credit cards.

“It'd be like, ‘Oh, this thing came up. This medical bill came up. We can't pay that because we have to pay childcare,'” Richard said. “The credit card debt just sort of happened over time.” And they had to deal with high interest rates.

Genny Richard and her husband Fabricio have used credit cards to help pay for expenses because of the cost of their childcare.

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Courtesy Genny Richard

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Richard, who works at a nonprofit, and her husband, a postdoctoral fellow, have accrued tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt over the last several years. They had to pay for their son’s childcare directly from their bank accounts — so they shifted other costs to cards when they could.

Their family is not alone — LAist heard from dozens of Southern California families who have had to go into debt to finance their childcare, or spend down their savings. Childcare can often be one of the largest costs in their monthly budgets, a problem reflected in state and national data:

• In L.A. County, childcare eats up nearly 20% of a median household income, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
• In a 2026 survey by Rocket Mortgage, nearly 60% of respondents said they’ve gone into credit card debt or taken on loans due to child-related expenses. 
• A voter poll conducted this past summer found that 3 in 4 respondents saw the cost of childcare for families with young children as a “crisis” or “major problem.” 

And according to an LAist review of data from the Federal Reserve, the median cost for parents who paid for 20 or more hours of childcare a week went up from $1,100 in 2023 to $1,517 in 2025 — a 38% increase.

How big a problem is childcare debt?

But unlike student loans and other forms of debt, good data on how much consumer debt families have because of childcare isn't available, said Chloe Gibbs, a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research who studies the childcare market.

She explained that while student loans are specifically financed, families are “shifting” spending and financing other household costs to pay for childcare and housing.

“We can't really observe that in data because we just see the consumer debt, and we don't know the reason, the impetus behind families perhaps shifting to using credit cards to pay for expenses, so it's an area where we don’t know much,” she said. That affects the ability of researchers and policymakers to know how childcare challenges affect a family’s financial circumstances in both the short and long term, she said, and how they contribute to broader concerns about affordability.

“I think it really is just reflective of the very fragmented landscape around early childhood care and that we just haven't made a concerted public effort in this space at all. So we've kind of left families to navigate and figure out these challenges on their own,” she said. “In the same way, we have just kind of let the data float around in no way that we actually sort of systemically measure and collect.”

What is clear, Gibbs said, is that childcare costs have been rising higher than the rate of inflation, and it’s not surprising families are using credit cards to help with other living expenses. Childcare costs are up 6.6% since January 2025 — and up 31.3% since December 2019, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by the Economic Security Project.

Why are costs rising?

At the same time, childcare providers have been struggling. Childcare providers are among the lowest-paid professionals nationwide. The workforce has also been shrinking, limiting the availability of care, which economists say drives up prices.

A national survey found that early educators are also grappling with the increasing cost of food, insurance and facilities costs in an industry that has already operated on thin margins. As a result, the majority of providers have had to pass along some costs to families by raising tuition, the survey found.

“There's just a fundamental mismatch in this market,” Gibbs said. State and federal childcare subsidies are usually tied to income, Gibbs noted, so families who earn too much to qualify get little help.

“It's insufficient in the current policy landscape because we still see lots of families, well up the income distribution, who face difficulties affording care,” Gibbs said.

What it means to rely on a credit card

Unable to qualify for subsidies, Pamela Arciaga, a mother of a 4-year-old in Glendale, accrued about $20,000 in credit card debt because of her son’s preschool costs. As the sole earner for her household, she couldn’t afford a full-time preschool program, so her son attended three days a week at $1,000 a month. Her parents would help her watch her son on the days he wasn’t in school, driving all the way from Riverside and back.

“What I relied on essentially was just my credit cards to pay for household groceries, sometimes to pay the water bill and power bill, because the preschool that he goes to, it's not as if I could have been on a payment plan, right? It was a monthly invoice that I had to pay so that he can stay in the program,” she said.

Pamela Arciaga and her son Finn. Arciaga has acquired about $20,000 in credit card debt because of childcare costs.

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Courtesy A Golden State for Kids

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Daniel Contreras and his wife were spending about $3,000 a month a young when their children were both in childcare. They didn't use credit cards, but had to forgo savings.

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Courtesy Daniel Contreras

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Arciaga works in early childhood advocacy, and said she also knew the value of preschool education for kindergarten readiness. She saw it as a short-term sacrifice. “It was an investment for me to actually enroll him in preschool,” she said. But the cost is that she’s blown through her emergency savings and is working to pay her debt off now that her son started transitional kindergarten. She pays about $300 a month for after-school care now.

“For emergencies, or anything like that, I still have to rely on the only credit card that I still have [with] a lot of credit on at this point or don't have a balance on,” she said.

She said she wishes that elected officials paid more attention to the issue of childcare costs.

“We have to work to keep the economy going,” Arciaga said. “However, we don't have any support, so it feels like we're paying double on, on top of taxes for not getting a lot of benefits.”

How childcare costs affect families’ futures

For Daniel Contreras and his wife, the cost of childcare has made them reimagine having a large family.

 “The reality sinks in pretty quickly when, you know, child number one comes in, and you're seeing your savings dissipate,” he said.

When Contreras’ children, who are now 7 and 10, were in childcare full-time in Whittier, the family was paying about $3,000 a month. “It was a fourth of our checks, and we had a mortgage still to pay. We had other items, just to keep the lights on.”

They couldn’t afford to save, and scaled back on buying new clothes for their kids. He said they avoided using credit cards to avoid falling into debt. His children are now older and in public school, but he said childcare still eats a large part of their monthly budget. After-school care costs $1,000 a month.

 “So we're still paycheck to paycheck,” Contreras said. “It's like a heavy weight that's being pushed down at this moment.” At times, he’d had to negotiate with his rental's management to avoid a late fee when behind on rent.

He said he recently watched the gubernatorial debate and was disappointed not to hear very much about childcare.

“I don't see anybody really pushing the envelope and supporting the workforce,” he said. “Because the workforce needs help.”

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