Recession likely cause for fall in US birth rate

An inspired headline in the Canadian Globe and Mail says it all: ''First went the markets, then jobs. Now babies.'' The article reports on the fact that the number of babies born in the United States has dropped for the second year in a row indicating that the nation's economic troubles were now affecting the birth rate.

According to data provided by the National Center for Health Statistics an estimated 4,136,000 babies were born in the United States in 2009, which was down 2.6 per cent over 2008.

This was on the back of a drop of 2 per cent that occurred between 2007 and 2008, pushing the nation's fertility rate below 2.1 per woman. This is an indicator that the birth rate in the US is no longer adequate to keep the population from declining.

Analysis of data from 25 states released in April by the Pew Research Center found that US states that tended to suffer most from the recession had the biggest declines in births. This would tend to bear out the assertion that recession would have been responsible for the fall in the birth rate.

Though the evidence may not be conclusive, the National Center for Health Statistics said in a statement "...there is quite possibly a connection between the decline in births and the economic downturn of the last couple of years."

It said that two consecutive years of declines "would be consistent with that," given that the recession started the year before.