Birth rates in the U.S. have fallen to a record low from 2008 to 2009. Numbers released on Friday by the National Centre for Health show a 2.7% decline.
Stephanie Ventura, the statistician who supervised the report said, “It’s a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before.”
The rate fell from 14.3 births per a thousand people in 2007 to 13.5 births per thousand last year. It was seen as one of the most drastic drops from 30 births per a thousand people in 1909. According to Ventura “It doesn’t matter how you look at it — fertility has declined.”
This is an especially sharp turnaround since 2007 when more kids were born in the nation’s history.
Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at John Hopkins University, in analyzing the birth rate drop said, “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 the 1930s and we’re seeing that in the Great Recession today.”
The three largest declines were in the most populated immigrant states. The study suggests the U.S. economic recession is the largest contributor to the decline.