That’s 750,000 teenage girls a year! A worrisome new report has found that for the first time in more than 10 years, in 2006 the teen pregnancy rate went up. Here’s why this matters:

Fewer than half of teen mothers receive a high school diploma – fewer than 2% earn a college degree by age 30.

Teen mothers face incredible challenges. They are more likely to be unemployed and live in poverty.

8 out of 10 fathers don’t marry the mother of their child.

Daughters of young teen mothers are 3 times more likely to become teen mothers themselves.

Sons of teen mothers are twice as likely to end up in prison.

The US has the highest teen pregnancy rate I the industrialized world – twice as high as England and Canada, and eight times as high as the Netherlands or Japan. Nearly half of teens have never considered how pregnancy would affect their lives.