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Fertility Rate in U.S. Hit a Record Low in 2018
The rate of births fell again last year, according to new government data, extending a lengthy decline as women wait until they are older to have children.
The number of births per 1,000 women in the United States has been declining even as the economy has recovered from the downturn of 2007-8.
The fertility rate in the United States fell in 2018 for the fourth straight year, extending a steep decline in births that began in 2008 with the Great Recession, the federal government said on Wednesday.
There were 59.1 births for every 1,000 women of childbearing age in the country last year, a record low, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The rate was down by 2 percent from the previous year, and has fallen by about 15 percent since 2007.
In all, there were 3,791,712 births in the country last year, the center said in its release of final birth data for 2018.
Fertility rates are essential measures of a society's demographic balance. If they are very high, resources like housing and education can be strained by a flood of children, as happened in the postwar Baby Boom years. If they are too low, a country may find itself with too few young people to replace its work force and support its elderly, as in Russia and Japan today.
In the United States, declines in fertility have not led to drops in population, in part because immigration has helped offset them.
The country has been living through one of the longest declines in fertility in decades. Demographers are trying to determine whether it is a temporary phenomenon or a new normal, driven by deeper social change.
Fertility rates tend to drop during difficult economic times, as people put off having babies, and then rise when the economy rebounds. That is what happened during and after the Great Depression of the 1930s. But this time around, the birthrate has not recovered with the economy. A brief uptick in the rate in 2014 did not last.
"It is hard for me to believe that the birthrate just keeps going down," said Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire.
Mr. Johnson estimated that if the rate had remained steady at its 2007 level, there would have been 5.7 million more births in the country since then.
The decline in 2018 was broad, sweeping through nearly all age groups, and reflected a long, gradual shift in American childbearing to later in the mother's life. The rate fell most steeply among women in their teens — down 7.4 percent from the year before. Births to teenagers have fallen by more than 70 percent since 1991.
Women in their 20s had fewer babies last year as well. Historically, women in their late twenties usually had the highest fertility rates of all, but they were overtaken in 2016 by women in their early 30s, reflecting a trend of later childbearing throughout American society.
The only age groups that recorded increases in fertility rates in 2018 were women in their late 30s and early 40s.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @04:52PM (5 children)
The effect there is going to be negligible. The article mentions the death change per 100k going from 328.5 to 348.2 and that's for everybody age 25-64, so a good chunk of those deaths are well beyond fertility dates. So maybe an increase of ~10 people per 100k or, in other words, [literally] 99.99% of the population not being affected. Those deaths are also extremely heavily weighted against men meaning the overall affect is further reduced. This [macrotrends.net] is a table of fertility in the US. It started plummeting, hard, in the 60s. Saw a brief uptick in the 80s and has been falling ever since. In my opinion the reason is two fold. The first isn't controversial - the internet and idiotic phones. Even teen pregnancy has been plummeting. You have a source of endless entertainment, endless porn, and endless socially acceptable addiction.
The second is perhaps a bit more controversial, but I don't really see why. We've adopted a large number of views that are going to be detrimental to overall fertility. Boys can be girls, being 'actively disinterested' in that notion (perhaps because you view a partner as not just somewhere to stick your dick, but someone to raise a family with) is considered bigoted, homosexual relation rates are greatly exaggerated in media and glamorized, expressing physical interest in a person - especially somebody you may regularly interact with is considered objectification if not outright misogyny, making the first move may be considered sexual assault if you misread a situation (he touched my thigh!), so forth and so on.
I'd say you could see this effect by comparing nations where this has not played as large a role in society, but you can even see it within societies. Turns out [thecut.com] in the 2012 election you could effectively predict how each state voted, by little more than their fertility rates. Same exact thing held true in 2016 as well. Just looked at the list [wikipedia.org] of states by fertility. It wasn't until you hit the 13th state, that you got an exception - and it was Hawaii which kind of plays by its own rules. Continental it was the 16th state, Minnesota - and that was a razor close one at 46.44% vs 44.92%. Hillary probably took it on spoiler votes. Evan McMullin, yeah I never heard of him either, picked up 1.8% of the vote with another 1.7% going to "other" candidates. It's really quite interesting! Screw polls, I'm just going to go see how fertility rates look for the next election!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:26PM
Oh, because it's so good to have kids with no supporting parents, right?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by PartTimeZombie on Friday November 29 2019, @12:40AM
I'd say you should get out more. Your second point is not controversial, it's word-salad nonsense.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 29 2019, @03:00AM (1 child)
Its pretty established that fertility levels, or rather birth rates drop when women are educated, have rights to equality, and have access to birth control. Something that really started in the '60's. Your list of States and how they voted reflects on how they treat women, including access to birth control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @04:40AM
Yes, it is pretty established that giving women any agency is unsustainable.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday November 29 2019, @12:08PM
Please mod parent some combination "wrong" "overrated" and "rant". Birth rates plummeted in 1958 with the introduction of the birth control pill. It turns out that women getting a vote on whether or not to have a baby means that a bunch of them vote "no". Moving the system from a "one party veto" (condoms) to a "two party veto" hinders successful votes. It saw a brief uptick in the 1980s because of generational dynamics - Gen X on average, GenXers were 21 at the 1993 "recovery peak", not coincidentally, the most fertile childbearing age is 22.
The real story here is that the following generation - the millennial generation - is postponing marriage and childbirth HARD. https://www.bentley.edu/news/nowuknow-why-millennials-refuse-get-married [bentley.edu] . Median age at first marriage is up for women/men from 20/23 to 27/29. The move from female first marriage age from *20* (2 years prior to peak fertility) to *27* (5 years after peak fertility) has a pretty monstrous effect on overall fertility.