Sex education found to help teenagers delay sex

Undate file photo shows a couple in Russia. Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. (SergeiKarpukhin/Reuters)CHICAGO (Reuters) - Teenagers who have had formal sexeducation are far more likely to put off having sex,contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of suchprograms, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
They found teenage boys who had sex education in schoolwere 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15,and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent lesslikely to have sex before age 15.
Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boyswould use contraceptives the first time they had sex, accordingto the study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention, which was published in the Journal ofAdolescent Health.
"Sex education seems to be working," Trisha Mueller, anepidemiologist with the CDC who led the study, said in astatement. "It seems to be especially effective for populationsthat are usually at high risk."
Mueller's team looked at a 2002 national survey of 2,019teens aged 15 to 19.
They found teen boys who had sex education in school werenearly three times more likely to use birth control the firsttime they had intercourse. But sex education appeared to haveno effect on whether teen girls used birth control, theresearchers found.
Black teenage girls who had sex education in school were 91percent less likely to have sex before age 15.
The researchers did not evaluate the content of sexeducation programs, including whether students were taughtabout contraception or about abstinence only.
Earlier studies, which relied on data from the 1970sthrough the 1990s, suggested sex education did little topersuade teens to delay sex.
The researchers said they think the difference may be thatsex education in the United States is now more widespread andis being taught at earlier ages.
"Unlike many previous studies, our results suggest that sexeducation before first sex protects youth from engaging insexual intercourse at an early age," they wrote.
(Editing by Maggie Fox and Xavier Briand)