Recession Left Baby Bust as U.S. Births Lowest Since 1920
By Frank Bass - Nov 30, 2012 12:01 AM ET
The U.S. birth rate fell to a record low last year, driven by a decline in the number of babies born to immigrant women, who have led the growth in the nation’s population for at least two decades.
The country’s birth rate fell 8 percent from 2007 to 2010, according to a Pew Research Center report. The rate dropped 6 percent for U.S.-born women and plummeted 14 percent for foreign-born females since 2007, the onset of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The decline continued last year to the lowest point since records began in 1920.
The study, released yesterday, underlines the vulnerability of Medicare and Social Security, the two largest social- insurance programs for the elderly. Both are funded by payroll taxes on working-age adults, and both are expected to fuel the U.S. budget deficit as baby boomers retire and fewer workers replace them.
“When families are small, people rely more heavily on these programs,” said Ted Fishman, author of “Shock of Gray,” a 2010 book about the world’s aging population. “A low birth rate could be a recipe for mass poverty and isolation.”
The Pew study, based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census, found that the 14 percent decline in the birthrate for foreign-born women was greater than in the entire period between 1990 and 2007. The birthrate among Mexican women in the U.S., the nation’s largest immigrant group, fell 23 percent. The birth rate is defined as the number of births per 1,000 women ages 15-44.
Economic Distress
The report doesn’t try to explain why births among Hispanic and other immigrant women fell so much, though the study’s author said it’s linked to economic distress.
“Immigrants were particularly hard hit” by the recession, Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at Washington-based Pew who co-wrote the study, said in an interview. “Hispanics were hardest hit by a loss of wealth, loss of jobs and increase in poverty.”
The U.S. birth rate in 2011 was 63.2 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, according to preliminary numbers. That’s down by almost half from a peak of 122.7 in 1957 during the postwar baby boom. The rate steadily fell before stabilizing at 65-70 births per 1,000 since the 1970s.
White, non-Hispanic women made up two-thirds of U.S. births in 2010, a drop from 72 percent in 1990. Eleven percent of births among U.S.-born women were to teen mothers; about 5 percent of foreign-born mothers were teens.
Women older than 35 were responsible for 21 percent of births by immigrant mothers, and the older mothers made up 13 percent of births among U.S.-born women. Immigrants accounted for 33 percent of all births to women over 35, the study found.
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-29/recession-left-baby-bust-as-u-s-births-lowest-since-1920.html
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