A 2% decline in U.S. birth rate including teenage births

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDApr 7 2010

According to Government statistics released this Tuesday, the birthrate in the United States has dropped by 2% from 2007 to 2008 with about 4.2 million babies born during this time. This drop also means that the fertility rate has gone below 2.1 children per woman. This statistic means that Americans are not giving birth to enough children to keep the population from declining.

Teenage births

On the sunnier side the teenage births have also declined by 2% with 41.5 births per 1,000 teens ages 15 to 19 in 2008. This drop comes after a two year rise in rates the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

Stephanie J. Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics said, "This is good news…It might come as a surprise because people were concerned the teen birthrate was on a different course." The reasons for this drop in teenage pregnancy are varied and poor economy is cited by some experts. "If there had been a third year of increase in the rate, the two-year 'uptick' in teen births would have become a troubling trend," said Sarah S. Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies.

Older mums

The report also showed that older women (between 40-44 years) have a higher birthrate. Since 1967, a highest rise is noted - 9.9 births per 1,000 women, up 4 percent since 2007. For women aged 45 to 49, birth rates also went up, from 0.6 births per 1,000 to 0.7 in 2008. Ventura mentioned the use of assisted reproductive technologies and said, "They may just be reaching what they see as the closing of their biological capabilities."

Premies

The report also showed that the percentage of babies born preterm, before 37 weeks of pregnancy, went down significantly, from 12.7 in 2007 to 12.3 in 2008.

Birth the natural way

The rates of Caesarean sections went up making it the 12^th consecutive year of such a rise. According to Ventura, more and more older women giving birth is touted as a reason for such a rise. But in reality C-section has risen uniformly across all ages according to Ventura.

Babies out of wedlock

In the report the birth rate in married women has declined by 2% but there is also an increase of births in unmarried women by 1%. In fact the rise in births among unmarried women rose by 27% in 2008 since 2002 according to the report.

Low income as a cause for decline in birth rate

A report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center analyzed data from 25 states, including Maryland and Virginia also cited poor economy as a cause for this drop. A survey last October showed 14 percent of Americans ages 18 to 34 and 8 percent of those ages 35 to 44 said they postponed having a child because of the recession. The youngest women were the most likely to say they had postponed having children. Nine percent of those earning less than $25,000 annually postponed having a child, while only 2 percent of those earning more than $75,000 did so. "Certainly younger folks have the 'luxury' of delaying their childbearing in an attempt to hold out for better economic conditions, while older people may feel the press of the biological clock prevents too much of a delay," said Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at Pew.

Way forward

President Obama proposed a launch of $110 million teen pregnancy prevention program in wake of this report. Programs of this nature will focus on encouraging abstinence until marriage. Of this $110 millions the initial $25 million will be used for newer approaches to the problem. The new health-care legislation includes $50 million a year for five years for abstinence programs.

However there are opponents of abstinence as the main focus and this trend of decline should be treated warily. James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based group said, "We don't yet know whether the new data for 2008 showing a decline constitutes a blip or a trend…What we do know is that the federal government is about to launch one of the largest teen pregnancy prevention efforts in decades, and if we are to ensure that this decline continues, it is critical that federal funds go only to the programs that work. The fact that Democrats included nearly a quarter-billion [dollars] of failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in health-care reform is alarming."