{"id":52878,"date":"2012-12-06T11:00:44","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=52878"},"modified":"2012-12-05T21:05:40","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T02:05:40","slug":"u-s-birth-rate-drops-to-lowest-on-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/12\/06\/u-s-birth-rate-drops-to-lowest-on-record\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Birth Rate Drops to Lowest on Record"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2011 the U.S. birth rate dropped to the lowest ever recorded, according to preliminary data released by the National Center for Health Statistics and reported by Pew Social Trends<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The decline was led by foreign-born women, who’s birthrate dropped 14% between 2007 and 2010, compared to a 6% drop for U.S.-born women.<\/p>\n

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Considering the last two decades, birthrates for all racial\/ethnic groups and both U.S.- and foreign-born women have been dropping, but the percent change is much larger among the foreign-born and all non-white groups. \u00a0The drop in the birthrate of foreign-born women is double that of U.S.-born and the drop in the birthrate of white women is often a fraction that of women of color.<\/p>\n

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It’s easy to forget that effective, reversible birth control was invented only about 50 years ago. \u00a0Birth control for married couples was illegal until 1965; legalization for single people would follow a few years later. \u00a0In the meantime, the second wave of feminism would give women the opportunity to enter well-paying, highly-regarded jobs, essentially giving women something rewarding to do other than\/in addition to raise children. \u00a0The massive drop in the birthrate during the ’60s likely reflects these changes.<\/p>\n

In addition to a drop in the number of children women are having, this data reflects a steady rise in the number of women deciding not to have children at all<\/a>. \u00a0The decision to eschew parenting altogether is disproportionately high among highly educated women<\/a>, suggesting that the there-are-now-other-things-in-life-to-do phenomenon might be at play.<\/p>\n

Many European countries are facing less than replacement levels of fertility and scrambling to figure out what to do about it (the health of most economies in the developed world is predicated on population growth), the U.S. is likely not far behind.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2011 the U.S. birth rate dropped to the lowest ever recorded, according to preliminary data released by the National Center for Health Statistics and reported by Pew Social Trends: The decline was led by foreign-born women, who’s birthrate dropped 14% between 2007 and 2010, compared to a 6% drop for U.S.-born women. Considering the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[135,36,12498,253,2125,778,285,1759,1760,1754],"class_list":["post-52878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-demography","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-history","tag-immigrationcitizenship","tag-intersectionality","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52878"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52883,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52878\/revisions\/52883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}