Dip in Birth Rates Reflects Recession, Report Suggests

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

WASHINGTON � Birth rates in the United States declined sharply during the recession, according to a report by the Pew Research Center released Wednesday. The analysis, based on data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, suggested women were putting off having babies while the economy was weak.

According to preliminary data from 2010, the rates dropped to 64.7 births per thousand women ages 15 to 44, from 69.6 births per thousand women in 2007, the year the recession began. The report analyzed data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau.

The link between financial distress and lower rates of childbirth surfaced clearly in the regional data. North Dakota, with one of the lowest unemployment rates in 2008, about 3 percent, was one of two states to show a slight increase in its birth rate from 2008 to 2009. The other was Maine.

In all other states, birth rates declined, said Gretchen Livingston, the lead author of the report. Arizona had the deepest decline in its birth rate, down by 7.2 percent.

It is not unusual for child bearing to fall in times of economic hardship. Birth rates dropped 26 percent in the decade that ended in 1936, Ms. Livingston said, during one of the greatest economic calamities in American history. But the rates later pick up. �What people seem to be doing is not so much deciding not to have children, but postponing until things start to recover,� she said.

She pointed to the difference in age groups as evidence: the only one whose birth rate rose was the 40- to 44-year-olds, who could not delay childbirth any longer. All other age groups� rates fell.

Hispanics, who were particularly hard hit by the recession, saw the largest decline, with birth rates down 5.9 percent from 2008 to 2009. Rates dropped by 2.4 percent among black women and by 1.6 percent among white women, the report found.