Update on the New Baby Bust

Today the National Center for Health Statistics released its preliminary report on births in 2011, confirming the big trend of this post-Great Recession era: a baby bust is in progress. If the government's writers were permitted to use exclamation marks in their reports, this particular report would be littered with them. Take a look...

• In 2011, there were 3,953,593 births in the United States. This was 1 percent fewer than the 3,999,386 final count for 2010 and 8 percent below the all-time high of 4,316,233 births in 2007.
• The 2011 fertility rate fell to an all-time low of 63.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. Did you get that? All time low!
• The birth rate for women aged 20 to 24 is the lowest ever recorded--85.3 births per 1,000 women in the age group. Young adults are postponing childbearing as they struggle in the wake of the Great Recession. 
• Among women aged 25 to 29, the birth rate fell to 107.2 births per 1,000 women in the age group--the lowest rate since 1976, a baby-bust year. 
• By race and Hispanic origin, the birth rate dropped the most among Hispanics--down 6 percent between 2010 and 2011 to 75.7 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. The rate fell 2 percent among black women to 65.5 and was unchanged among non-Hispanic white women at 58.8. 
• Births to unmarried women fell between 2010 and 2011, but the percentage of births to unmarried women remains above 40 percent.   
• Teenagers accounted for only 18 percent of births to unmarried women in 2011, the smallest percentage ever recorded and down from 50 percent in 1970. 
• The first-birth rate fell to an all-time low in 2011 as young women postponed motherhood. The second-birth rate fell to the lowest level since 1940.

Bottom line: demographers will tell you that postponed childbearing means less childbearing--fewer lifetime births, smaller families, and the arrival of another baby-bust generation.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Births: Preliminary Data for 2011