America’s birth rates are still near a historic low. One couple’s lesson in the new economics of having a child.
Tag: birth rates
Tackling Teen Pregnancy
American birth rates are lower than ever—unless you’re in Texas. Amanda Marcotte runs down what works (free condoms) and what doesn’t (abstinence-only education) when it comes to preventing teen pregnancies.
Recession Contraception? Birth Rate Down in US for 4th Year
U.S. births fell for the fourth year in a row, the government reported Wednesday, with experts calling it more proof that the weak economy has continued to dampen enthusiasm for having children.
But there may be a silver lining: The decline in 2011 was just 1 percent — not as sharp a fall-off as the 2 to 3 percent drop seen in other recent years.
“It may be that the effect of the recession is slowly coming to an end,” said Carl Haub, a senior demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. Read full article.
Why We Keep Accidentally Getting Pregnant
A fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of sex and the function of birth control appears to underlie the country’s remarkable rate of unwanted pregnancies.
Thirty-seven percent of babies born in the U.S. are the result of unplanned pregnancies. The National Survey of Family Growth, released this week by the CDC and the National Center for Health Statistics, suggests a number of possibilities for why this is, all of which merit further attention. But the leading reason that women eschewed birth control? They “did not think they would get pregnant.”
Because the survey looks only at unintended births — and not unintended pregnancies that ended in miscarriage or abortion — this means that there are 290,000 babies born each year to mothers who believed their coming into existence was a statistical improbability. Other data has indicated that 60 percent of women who gave birth to unplanned babies had not used contraception when they became pregnant; the survey indicates that a majority of them must misunderstand either the connection between sex and childbirth or how strongly correlated the two actually are, seeing pregnancy instead as an “it can’t happen to me” scenario.
Americans put off having babies amid poor economy
Twenty-somethings who postponed having babies because of the poor economy are still hesitant to jump in to parenthood — an unexpected consequence that has dropped the USA’s birthrate to its lowest point in 25 years.
The fertility rate is not expected to rebound for at least two years and could affect birthrates for years to come, according to Demographic Intelligence, a Charlottesville, Va., company that produces quarterly birth forecasts for consumer products and pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Procter & Gamble.
Marketers track fertility trends closely because they affect sales of thousands of products from diapers, cribs and minivans to baby bottles, toys and children’s pain relievers.
As the economy tanked, the average number of births per woman fell 12% from a peak of 2.12 in 2007. Demographic Intelligence projects the rate to hit 1.87 this year and 1.86 next year — the lowest since 1987.
The less-educated and Hispanics have experienced the biggest birthrate decline while the share of U.S. births to college-educated, non-Hispanic whites and Asian Americans has grown.
Coping With High-Risk Pregnancy After Infertility Treatment
by Corey Whelan
As infertility technologies improve, so do success rates. Statistically, increases in pregnancy and live birth rates have been seen for women across all age ranges over the past decade. These success stories include pregnancies …