Forget the Dow and the GDP. Here's the latest economic indicator: The U.S. birthrate has fallen to its lowest level in at least a century as many people apparently decided they couldn't afford more mouths to feed.
The birthrate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007. Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show.
"It's a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before," said Stephanie Ventura, the demographer who oversaw the report.
The birthrate, which takes into account changes in the population, fell to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people last year. That's down from 14.3 in 2007 and way down from 30 in 1909, when it was common for people to have big families.
The situation is a striking turnabout from 2007, when more babies were born in the United States than any other year in the nation's history. The recession began that fall, dragging down stocks, jobs and births.
"When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression in the 1930s and we're seeing that in the Great Recession today," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.
The birthrate dipped below 20 per 1,000 people in 1932 and did not rise above that level until the early 1940s. Recent recessions, in 1981-82, 1990-91 and 2001, all were followed by small dips in the birthrate, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures.
Nearly half of low- and middle-income women surveyed a year ago by the Guttmacher Institute said they wanted to delay pregnancy or limit the number of children they have because of money concerns.
Besides finances, experts said a decline in immigration to the United States also may be pushing births down.
Cherlin said the U.S. birthrate "is still higher than the birthrate in many wealthy countries and we also have many immigrants entering the country. So we do not need to be worried yet about a birth dearth" that would crimp the nation's ability to take care of its growing elderly population.
The new U.S. report is a rough count of births from states. It estimates there were 4,136,000 births in 2009, down from a year-ago estimate of 4,247,000 in 2008 and more than 4.3 million in 2007.
The report does not give details on trends in different age groups. That will come next spring and will give a clearer picture of who is and is not having children, Ventura said.
SOURCE: The Associated Press
Marilynn Marchione
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