In 2002, there were 4,019,280 births in the United States, down slightly from 2001 (4,025,933).Posted on 07/09/2003 5:36:49 PM PDT by ex-snook
U.S. Birth Rate Reaches Record Low
Births to Teens Continue 12-Year Decline; Cesarean Deliveries Reach All-Time High
The U.S. birth rate fell to the lowest level since national data have been available, reports the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) birth statistics released today by HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. Secretary Thompson also noted that the rate of teen births fell to a new record low, continuing a decline that began in 1991.
The birth rate was 13.9 per 1,000 persons in 2002, a decline of 1 percent from the rate of 14.1 per 1,000 in 2001 and down 17 percent from the recent peak in 1990 (16.7 per 1,000), according to a new CDC report, “Births: Preliminary Data for 2002.” The current low birth rate primarily reflects the smaller proportion of women of childbearing age in the U.S. population, as baby boomers age and Americans are living longer.
There has also been a recent downturn in the birth rate for women in the peak childbearing ages. Birth rates for women in their 20s and early 30s were generally down while births to older mothers (35-44) were still on the rise. Rates were stable for women over 45.
Birth rates among teenagers were down in 2002, continuing a decline that began in 1991. The birth rate fell to 43 births per 1,000 females 15-19 years of age in 2002, a 5-percent decline from 2001 and a 28-percent decline from 1990. The decline in the birth rate for younger teens, 15-17 years of age, is even more substantial, dropping 38 percent from 1990 to 2002 compared with a drop of 18 percent for teens 18-19 years.
“The reduction in teen pregnancy has clearly been one of the most important public health success stories of the past decade,” Secretary Thompson said. “The fact that this decline in teen births is continuing represents a significant accomplishment.”
More than one fourth of all children born in 2002 were delivered by cesarean; the total cesarean delivery rate of 26.1 percent was the highest level ever reported in the United States. The number of cesarean births to women with no previous cesarean birth jumped 7 percent and the rate of vaginal births after previous cesarean delivery dropped 23 percent. The cesarean delivery rate declined during the late 1980s through the mid-1990s but has been on the rise since 1996.
Among other significant findings:
In 2002, there were 4,019,280 births in the United States, down slightly from 2001 (4,025,933).
The percent of low birthweight babies (infants born weighing less than 2,500 grams) increased to 7.8 percent, up from 7.7 percent in 2001 and the highest level in more than 30 years. In addition, the percent of preterm births (infants born at less than 37 weeks of gestation) increased slightly over 2001, from 11.9 percent to 12 percent.
More than one-third of all births were to unmarried women. The birth rate for unmarried women was down slightly in 2002 to 43.6 per 1,000 unmarried women, reflecting the growing number of unmarried women in the population
Access to prenatal care continued a slow and steady increase. In 2002, 83.8 percent of women began receiving prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy, up from 83.4 percent in 2001 and 75.8 percent in 1990.
Data on births are based on information reported on birth certificates filed in State vital statistics offices and reported to CDC through the National Vital Statistics System. The report is available on CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics Web site.
So true. When we decided to have children we also made the decision that one of us would stay home, raise, and be responsible for them. That ideal would work if it weren't for killer taxes. Our property taxes alone have more than tripled in the last 8 years and equal 1 2/3rd months income! That much tax on a small 3 bedroom 40 yr old home on a 60' lot in the country (no services)! We're frugal by necessity - no vacations, thrift store clothes (yes, you too can live in such luxury on a state employee's supervisor's salary). I know other families in the same shape, so my question is is that author going to pay for the extra kids I'm supposed to have? The teen birth rates are still staggering. That's 1 out of every 23 girls giving birth and then there's the ones who have abortions. Ok, we just had a good old fashioned heart to heart or else talk here.
I had relatives who moved to Long Island nearly fifty years ago.
I remember visiting with them and, as a city kid, marveling at the comparative paradise it was then--I remember going down to a bay and picking mussels off the rocks to take home and cook--delicious.
I remember how clear the water was in the harbors.
And I remember how wonderful the very air was--it was more than something in how it smelled; you could somehow feel its freshness. It made one feel very much alive and healthy.
I've been back there a few times since, and the place was no longer clean--the air was somehow suffocatingly bad.
And not only did they build up everything, but they erected a very cheap and ugly architecture.
Hideous.
And I sensed a pronounced liberalism--even in Suffolk County.
Horrible.
Those people who have yet to see this happen to their open spaces have no idea how fast the transformation can come about.
They are ignorant.
And my great-grandparents owned a large farm in Nassau county. When my great-grandfather died, his wife didn't do a good job managing it and it was sold off piece by piece to pay for taxes. It's now the site of the Green Acres shopping mall.
Very interesting--I thought that before Green Acres was built, the area had been an airfield---Curtiss Field.
If you go to the library of Congress website or Newsday's Website, you can find old maps of the area.
The Library of Congress has a few panoramic maps drawn in 3-D, which includes the buildings, from around the turn of the 19/20th centuries.
You can see the Amityville Horror house in the panoramic map of Amityville from the early 1900s, if you know where to look for it.
So true again, Age. Even TX can't keep up with the overcrowding. The city sprawl has taken over vast areas of nothing but farm and ranch land. Yesterday we went for a drive and were appalled at the amount of land out here in the boonies that has sprouted McMansions within the last couple years. The drive to school has gone from hardly seeing a handful of other cars on our little nothing roads to bumper to bumper traffic.
It's only in desert areas of the west or parts of the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana that are just too far from amenitie for most people's comfort, that the country is under-populated
Yes, yes, too true.
I love New England, and I always had it in the back of my mind that I might buy a large bit of land along the Maine coast on which to retire.
I recently did a quick check of the price of land there--I was shocked.
The high prices was all I needed to realize that even up there, the place must be crowded.
And I'll bet I know how that came about: Probably all the rich media liberals who tell the average American how glorious immigration is, take the cash they make and buy estates along the shore, so they can flee the hell holes immigration and crowding is making of the places the average American must live.
LOL.
That's a very descriptive terms.
My dad used to point to modern architecture and tell me the reason it's so sparse is not so much art, but economy--he'd say they can't afford to build them like they used to.
What ugly, tasteless, shoeboxes American architecture has become.
If I must transit a populated place, beautiful architecture is at least some kind of substitute for nature--but the garbage their buidling now . . . ugh!
I haven't been to Texas, but I've heard about what you've experienced.
Sad, very sad.
And remember--the day WILL come when that crowding will shift the states politics seriously to the left.
Crowded but still pretty last time I saw it fifteen years ago. But it won't last. And at any rate, I'll bet it's more liberal than it was.
And its surrounded.
But I don't like Nassau county at all, even though my parents are still there. Too crowded, traffic is terrible, and the air does smell bad.
You left out the most important part: With all that crowding, came liberalism.
As for Suffolk, from what I've seen of it since the 1980's, its air is not what it was fifty years ago. And neither is the water.
Another think that shocked me was the absence of insects at night.
People may think me strange, but I missed them--I was always fascinated by the variety of bugs that would congregate around lights at night.
That was the case on LI fifty years ago--but now I guess they've been sprayed to extinction. I find that ominous.
I don't think the entire farm = the entire Green Acres mall, but according to my dad some of it is definitely under the mall. I don't know if the airfield was once the farm (the farm went away around 1910 or 1920, as I recall). I'll have to ask my dad - he's really up on the history of the area
I believe Green Acres was built in the 1950's, and that the airfield was there before--possibly between its being Green Acres and your grandfather's farm.
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