Health Snapshots

Young people smoking

In 2017, 10% of secondary school students 12-17 years in South Australia reported having ‘ever smoked tobacco’, lower than the national average of 18%, and a significant decrease from 1996 and 2011 when the proportions were 56% and 20% respectively.

Young men are slightly more likely to have smoked tobacco in the previous week than young females (3% as opposed to 2%) and young people 15-17 years were more likely to have smoked in the previous week than 12-15 year olds (5% as opposed 1%).

In South Australia, the proportion of young people 14-19 years that reported being daily smokers in 2016 was 5%, a slight decrease from 2010 (6%).

Young mothers

The proportion of mothers who were aged 15-19 years at the time of birth was 2.4% of all live births in South Australia in 2016. The proportion has decreased steadily over the last 10 years and has halved since 2006 when the proportion was 4.8%.

The proportions vary across the 4 South Australian local health networks (LHN) from 1.3% in the Central Adelaide LHN to 4.0% in the Country Health SA LHN.

The birth rate for teenage mothers in South Australia, which is the number of mothers per 1,000 women aged 15-19 years, in 2016 was 9 per 1,000 women. This rate has also decreased in the previous 10 years down from 17 per 1,000 women in 2006.

For Aboriginal mothers aged 15-19 years the birth rate in South Australia in 2015 was 53 per 1,000 women, which is down from 77 in 2006 but up from 48 in 2013 (which was the lowest rate in the last 10 years).

More snapshots