3,953,593
Births in the United States in 2011, down 1 percent from the year before.
2100
The hypothetical total fertility rate -- the lifetime births for 1000 women -- necessary to maintain a population through births.
1894.5
The actual total U.S. fertility rate in 2011, 10 percent below the replacement level.
63.2
The general fertility rate for 2011, being the number of births per 1000 women aged 15-44 years, the lowest ever reported. The highest general fertility rate is among Hispanic mothers (75.7); the lowest, among American Indian and Alaska native mothers (47.8).
40.7 percent
The percent of all U.S. births in 2011 to unmarried women. For teenagers, the rate is almost nine out of ten (88.6 percent). For non-Hispanic blacks, it's seven out of ten (72.3 percent). For non-Hispanic whites, it's almost three out of ten (29.1 percent).
Thus we continue the most remarkable social experiment of our time: whether a society can prosper, in the broadest sense of the word, when the link between marriage and child-bearing has been broken.
Here's my guess: no.
Children born to unmarried mothers are more likely to grow up in a single-parent household, experience instability in living arrangements, live in poverty, and have socio-economic problems. As these children reach adolescence, they are more likely to have low educational attainment, engage in sex at a younger age, and have a birth outside marriage. As young adults, children born outside of marriage are more likely to be idle (neither in school nor employed), have lower occupational status and income, and have more troubled marriages and more divorces than those born to married parents.
Women who give birth outside of marriage tend to be more disadvantaged than their married counterparts, both before and after the birth. Unmarried mothers generally have lower incomes, lower education levels, and are more likely to be dependent on welfare assistance . . . .
(_____, "In 2011, as it has been for four consecutive years, more than four in ten births . . . were to unmarried women," childtrendsdatabank.org, November 2012)
Unmarried women elected Barack Hussein Obama president. His election is incompatible with social prosperity, broadly defined.
(National Vital Statistics System, "Births: Preliminary Data for 2011," October 3, 2012)
Comments