Economic downturn also brings slump in births

McClatchy Newspapers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Daffny Atwell would love to have another baby. Her son, Nathaniel, turned 1 this month, and she’s ready for more.

But she can’t afford it. Her Pampered Chef business is hurting as many of the people she knows are looking for work and barely scraping by.

“A baby is an awesome thing, but when you have so much stress, you don’t want to bring a baby into that and have to worry so much,” said Atwell, 19, of Leavenworth, Kan.

Chalk up another casualty of the worrisome economy: baby-making.

A “baby bust” strikes when times are bad — the Great Depression and the oil recession of the mid-’70s saw record lows in U.S. birth rates.

It’s still early to have a full view of the current recession’s birth rates, given that it takes nine months to make a baby and government statistics lag behind real time. But demographers are seeing signs that Americans are holding back again as unemployment nears 10 percent and legions more are worried about providing for a family.

For example, Missouri’s birth rate — the number of births per 1,000 women of child-bearing age — in the first five months of this year dropped 6 percent, a decrease that state demographers called substantial.

The decline is the biggest change Missouri has seen in birth rates in the last five years.

“It’s a very big change,” said Carl Haub, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. “It kind of sticks out.”

Kansas hasn’t reported birth rates for 2009, but last year births were down in Kansas, Missouri and across the country. In Kansas, women gave birth to 136 fewer babies, a 0.3 percent decline after birth rates had increased or stayed the same since 2004.

The decrease was greater in Missouri, where births declined 1.2 percent last year. Missouri demographers noted that the economy may have contributed to that dip, the state’s first since 2002.

Nationally, the birth rate dropped last year to the lowest point since 2002.

A baby bust is part of an emerging picture of how the economy is shaping family life. Fewer people are moving as job opportunities dry up, fewer people are getting married and fewer are divorcing.

“Everyone is frozen in place, scared to make a decision about the future,” said Laura Lindberg, a researcher for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to reproductive health issues.

Lindberg was the lead researcher on a survey the institute recently released of middle- and low-income women that found almost a third were putting off having a child because of the economy.

Almost half wanted to delay having a baby, the survey found, and 28 percent of the women wanted fewer children because of the economy.

The Guttmacher survey found that many women were more careful about birth control, but some reported that they were less able to afford birth control.

Kansas City’s 11 Planned Parenthood clinics are living that reality. In the last year, they’ve seen a 20 percent increase in the number of patients seeking birth control.

“That’s a pretty significant increase,” said Peter Brownlie, the chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.

The clinics’ workers are hearing that women are worried about having children in these times of economic insecurity, Brownlie said.

“What all this reflects is a fundamental value in our society that it’s important that women be able to make their own decisions whether and when to have kids and to trust they’ll make the right decision for themselves and their families,” Brownlie said. “As their life circumstances change, their decisions will change.”

Haub, the demographer for the Population Reference Bureau, thinks the economy is causing a drop in births this year. He noted that Arizona has seen a 7 percent decrease for the first six months of this year.

As unemployment nears 10 percent, couples are reconsidering starting or expanding their family. And the unemployment rate doesn’t take into account all the workers who are worried about losing their jobs.

But unemployment can affect procreation in other ways.

“I’ve been on call-in talk shows where people said, ’My wife got laid off, so we’re going to take this time to have a baby,’ “ Haub said. “That’s not unheard of. But I think we can expect a dip. It does seem to be showing up.”

S. Philip Morgan, a professor at Duke University who studies fertility rates, is predicting a 5 to 10 percent decline this year in the total fertility rate, which is the number of babies born to a woman in her lifetime. The rate has hovered between 2 and 2.1 for 10 years, and Morgan predicts it will drop to about 1.85 this year.

“When there’s an economic downturn and budgets are tight and people are concerned about having a job, they put off all sorts of things,” Morgan said. “They put off buying a house, changing jobs and going on vacation — and they put off having kids.”

Morgan said he expects the decline in births to last a year and a half to two years. Once families become more optimistic about the economy, they’ll have those babies they’ve been putting off, he said.

It’s a reasonable strategy, Morgan said, and not at all surprising that people are waiting to have babies until they feel more secure about the economy.

“We’re very used to the notion of putting off parenthood until we can best do a good job of it,” Morgan said.

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