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Overview
> 1. US Birth Rate Falls to Record Low in 2011
2. Birth Rate Needed to Maintain Current Population
3. A Nation of Singles – Implications For the Future
4. How Did We Become a Nation of Singles?
5. Conclusions – How Do We Turn the Trend Around?
1. US Birth Rate Falls to Record Low in 2011
The US birth rate plunged to a record low in recent years, with the decline being led by immigrant women hit hard by the recession, this according to a study released in late November by the Pew Research Center. A falling birth rate has major implications for the economy and our aging population, as I will discuss today.
The overall US birth rate decreased by 8% between 2007 and 2010, with a much bigger drop of 14% among foreign-born immigrant women. The overall birth rate is now at its lowest level since reliable records have been kept, falling to 63.2 births per 1,000 women who are of childbearing age in 2011. That is down from 122.7 births at the peak in 1957 during the Baby Boom.
The birth rate among foreign-born immigrant women, who have tended to have bigger families, has also been declining in recent decades, although more slowly, according to the Pew report. However, according to the report, the birth rate for immigrant women plunged from 2007 to 2011. One of the most dramatic drops was among Mexican immigrants – down 23%.
Side Note: Some people confuse the birth rate (number of births per 1,000 women) with the fertility rate. The fertility rate is the average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime. The fertility rate needed to maintain the current US population is 2.1 children born to women of child-bearing age. According to multiple studies, the US fertility rate among women is now only 1.9 children and falling.
Most researchers attribute the drop in the birth rate in large part due to the severe recession in 2007-2009.The decline could have far-reaching implications for US economic and social policy. A continuing decrease could challenge long-held assumptions that previously rising birth rates among immigrants will help maintain the US population and create the taxpaying workforce needed to support the aging Baby-Boom generation.
The fall didn’t occur because there are fewer immigrant women of childbearing age, but because of a change in their behavior, the Pew report noted, citing data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the US Census Bureau. The Pew report concluded that “the economic downturn seems to play a pretty large role in the drop in the fertility rate.”
Although the declining US birth rate has not created the kind of stark imbalances found in graying countries such as Japan or Italy, it should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers, said Roberto Suro, a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California who studies trends in birth rates. He warned:
“We’ve been assuming that when the Baby-Boomer population gets most expensive [to support], that there are going to be [enough] immigrants and their children who are going to be paying into [programs for the elderly], but in the wake of what’s happened in the last five years, we have to reexamine those assumptions.”
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