Cross-posted at Scientopia.
As demonstrated by some figures posted at Family Inequality, the U.S. birthrate has dropped during the recession:
But the birth rate hasn’t dropped for all American women equally. Women who’ve already had two children were most likely to skip having a child during this period, and women who already had one child were more likely to delay or end childbearing than women with no children. But women who already had three children were relatively ready to plow forward with a fourth, even more ready than childless women.
To make an even stronger case that the recession inhibited childbearing, Philip Cohen correlated birth data by state and state unemployment rates (both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics). His figure shows that “fertility fell more where the recession hit harder”:
Great stuff, as always, from Family Inequality.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 8
Anonymous — August 5, 2011
There isn't nearly enough information here to support this as fact, but I surmise that women with 3 or more children are simply less interested in family planning, economics be damned. Or is this just my small-family bias talking?
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Guest — August 5, 2011
That graph is what my statistics professor would call a "scatter graph" - in other words, you can't viably, mathematically, draw the line that's been put there because the data points are too random to be conclusive. :(
Bri — August 5, 2011
Actually, for everyone being really rude to those us from large families (I'm one of six) it's ussually because once you ecconomically able to support three kids, kids after that don't make a big difference. You're already buying in bulk, there are more then enough cloths for hand-me-downs you have all the furniture. My mom is a big believer in condoms and birth control and waiting for the right time to ahave kids and she went ahead and had six because she wanted them and could afford them. So stop knocking large families and saying we have no sense, because that's just propaganda.
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