ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of key findings that have helped to identify some of the important factors associated with teenage conceptions. Close links between rates of teenage pregnancy and levels of social deprivation have been identified in a number of studies. One of the earliest in the UK was carried out in Scotland, with Smith demonstrating that young women living in the most deprived areas who became pregnant were considerably to give birth while a teenager and to be less likely to have an abortion. Using multi-level modelling, Diamond and their group found that specially developed indices of social deprivation predicted rates of teenage conception in local authority areas across the South West of England. Although national and regional variations, and their associated correlates, are of great interest in narrowing down the search for explanatory factors and developing policy interventions, they do not enable a level of understanding to identify individual-level risk of, and/or vulnerability to, early pregnancy.
