Today’s report from the national Center for Health Statistics is showing that teen birth rates is the lowest in 70 years, and those low rates apply to all ethnics minorities as well.

The teen birth rate had been dropping and dropped by 9% from 2009 to 2010 to a historic low of 34.3 births per 1,000 teens between the ages of 15-19.  Asians had the lowest teen birth rate at 10.9, 23.5 for whites and Latinos had the highest teen birth rate at 56 teen births per 1,000 Hispanics.

“The fact that states with high Hispanic populations still show declines speaks to the more general pattern of increasing contraceptive use and declining teen births,” says Laura Lindberg to USA Today, a senior research associate with the non-profit Guttmacher Institute in New York.

The use of contraceptive amongst teens is one of the driving forces behind the low rates experts say.  In addition other reports show that teens having sex is decreasing which is a 20-year trend.  Mississippi continues to have the highest rate of teen births for any state, while Arizona saw the biggest drop at 29%. 

Teen birth rates recently peaked in 1991 at 61.3 births per 1,000 teens.  And in spite of the record low levels, the U.S. still has one of the highest teen birth rates for an industrialized nation.