Out-of-Wedlock births are increasing for women of all ages.
Birth rates are up for women in their 20s, 30s and early 40s as well as for teens 15-19, according to a government report based on 2007 birth certificates. Most of the age-related increases were 1% or less, but the largest bump was 2.3% for women ages 30-34, says Stephanie Ventura, a demographer at the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the preliminary data. So who are these women who in 2007 had a record 4.31 million babies? Some are teens, others are in their 20s. Some are "older mothers" in their 40s. The data show marked changes over time. "Teens used to account for 50% of births to unmarried women in 1970. It's gone down to just 23% now," Ventura says. "That shows the increases are driven by adult women 20 and older." And more and more aren't married.
MARCH 18, 2009, Unmarried Women Boost Record 2007 U.S. Birth Rate, USA Today, by Sharon Jayson, http://www.usatoday.com/
The birth rate rose slightly for women of all ages, and births to unwed mothers reached an all-time high of about 40 percent, continuing a trend begun years ago. More than three-quarters of these women were 20 or older. For a variety of reasons, it's become more acceptable for women to have babies without a husband, said Duke University's S. Philip Morgan, a leading fertility researcher. Even happy couples may be living together without getting married, experts say. Some cited a growing trend among all adult women to have children regardless of their marital status.
There was a Baby Boom in 2007, and a rise in the teen birth rate.
More babies were born in the United States in 2007 than any year in the nation's history, topping the peak during the baby boom 50 years earlier, federal researchers reported Wednesday. There is both good and bad news from the more than 4.3 million births: The U.S. population is more than replacing itself, a healthy trend. However, the teen birth rate was up for the second year in a row. The new numbers suggest the second year of a baby boomlet, with U.S. fertility rates higher in every racial group, the highest among Hispanic women. On average, a U.S. woman has 2.1 babies in her lifetime. That's the "magic number" required for a population to replace itself.... But it's not clear the boomlet will last long. Some experts think birth rates are already declining because of the economic recession that began in late 2007.
All types of extended families are increasingly living together in various arrangements.
According to the 2007 US Census, 3.6 million parents live with adult children, up from 2.3 million in 2000. Almost 3.5 million siblings live with a brother or sister, up from 3 million. And more than 6.5 million people share quarters with other relatives, up from 4.8 million. Their ranks continue to grow.
FEBRUARY 24, 2009, Adult Children Back In The Nest: The Economic Downturn Is One Reason Families Are Combining Households, by Marilyn Gardner, The Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/.
There's some evidence that more families are living in multigenerational households these days. In a recent poll of people ages 18 and older, the AARP found about a quarter of them were living with their parents or in-laws; and about one in seven were living with a sibling. About 15 percent of the 1,002 people polled by the organization said they're at some risk of having to move back into their parents' home. And about a third of those at risk said they may have to do so because of job loss. Overall, the number of multigenerational houses has increased from 5 million in 2000 to 6.2 million in 2008, the AARP says. That trend takes into account older people who move into their children's homes, but also indicates an increase in "boomerang children" who move back in with their parents after leaving their home, according to Elinor Ginzler, the organization's senior vice president for livable communities.
MARCH 5, 2009, The upside of moving back into your parents' basement, by John D. Sutter, CNN, http://www.cnn.com/. [posted 4/17/2009]
Marriage in the U.S. is on a steady decline. Factors playing into this: delay of first marriage, rapid growth of unmarried cohabitation, increase in life-long singlehood, and rising number of out-of-wedlock births.
Marriage trends in recent decades indicate that Americans have become less likely to marry, and the most recent data show that the marriage rate in the United States continues to decline. Much of this decline-it is not clear just how much-results from the delaying of first marriages until older ages: the median age at first marriage went from 20 for females and 23 for males in 1960 to about 26 and 27, respectively, in 2005. Other factors accounting for the decline are the growth of unmarried cohabitation and a small decrease in the tendency of divorced persons to remarry. The decline also reflects some increase in lifelong singlehood, though the actual amount can not be known until current young and middleaged adults pass through the life course. Marriage rates are continuing to decline, and the percentage of out-of-wedlock births is rising.
JULY 2007, The State of Our Unions 2007: The Social Health of Marriage in America, The National Marriage Project, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/SOOU2007.pdf. [posted 3/3/2008]
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