It’s not a traditional economic measure by any means, but regardless of the stock market or the (alleged) GDP growth, there is a lot to be said for looking at a stat that is usually considered of interest only to demographers and the Catholic Church. That statistic is the number of pregnancies in the United States, which declined to a 12 year low in 2009.
(Reuters) – The pregnancy rate among U.S. women fell to its lowest point in 12 years in 2009, continuing its slide from a peak in 1990, according to U.S. government data released on Thursday. […]
The rate was 102.1 pregnancies for every 1,000 women in 2009, the most recent data researchers analyzed. That is the lowest since 1997, when the rate was 101.6 per 1,000 women, a report by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics said.
This is consistent with the rapidly declining rate of births in the United States for the year 2012:
The U.S. fertility rate fell to another record low in 2012, with 63.0 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s down slightly from the previous low of 63.2 in 2011.
It marked the fifth year in a row the U.S. birth rate has declined, and the lowest rate on record since the government started tracking the fertility rate in 1909. In 2007, the rate was 69.3.
Why is the number of pregnancies and births relevant to our economy? Well, consider how unemployment and underemployment affect people’s life decisions. Having and raising children is expensive in America. The more uncertain the job prospects of younger people the more likely they are to postpone marriage and children. What is interesting was that despite the overall decline in 2009, pregnancies among women over 30 increased. Wonder why? Well besides the obvious answer (biological clock ticking) there is also an economic explanation. Employment rates are generally better for the over thirty crowd than those still in their twenties. For example, check out this study from 2012:
Just 54 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 currently have jobs, according to a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center. That’s the lowest employment rate for this age group since the government began keeping track in 1948. And it’s a sharp drop from the 62 percent who had jobs in 2007 — suggesting the recession is crippling career prospects for a broad swath of young people who were still in high school or college when the downturn began.
Now consider that 2013 article I cited above. Here’s the context that shows a link to the economic prospects of young people:
The birth rate has largely been declining since the post-World War II baby boom, but that fall accelerated during the Great Recession, as high unemployment derailed many young people’s plans to move out and start families.
About 22% of 18-to-34-year-olds surveyed by the Pew Research Center in December 2011 said they had postponed having a baby because of economic conditions.
Even in 2012 — three years after the recession officially ended — 36% of Millennials ages 18 to 31 still lived at home with their parents, according to Pew analysis of U.S. Census data.
The number of births/pregnancies has long been known to follow economic indicators such as unemployment rates. The best known examples are the Great Depression (rates declined sharply) and the Baby Boom years after WWII when the economy as well as the birth rate were booming (pardon the pun). For all the so-called good news about our economy, much of it does not have any impact or relevance to our current generation of young people who are being shut out of the job market or forced to take low-paying, part-time employment just to struggle to make ends meet. Our Economy may be improving the lives of the uber-rich (a/k/a the so-called and self-labeled job creators) and even those slightly lower on the income scale …
–All told, average inflation-adjusted income per family climbed 6% between 2009 and 2012, the first years of the economic recovery. During that period, the top 1% saw their incomes climb 31.4% — or, 95% of the total gain — while the bottom 99% saw growth of 0.4%.
–Last year, the richest 10% received more than half of all income — 50.5%, or the largest share since such record-keeping began in 1917. Here is how the top earners break down: Top 1%: incomes above $394,000 in 2012; Top 5%: incomes between $161,000 and $394,000; Top 10%: incomes between $114,000 and $161,000.
… but it hasn’t done much of anything to help people under thirty. If anything, our government and the private sector have failed utterly to improve the economic prospects of that generation commonly referred to as the Millenials.
The on-ramp to adulthood is delayed and harder to reach for young people today, a reality that is changing the country’s society and economy, according to a new report.
More demanding job requirements, coupled with the pressures of the recession, have delayed the transition to adulthood for young people in the past decade and earned them the title of “the new lost generation,” according to the report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, published Monday. […]
Through analyzing about three decades of census data—from 1980 to 2012—the study found that on average, young workers are now 30 years old when they first earn a median-wage income of about $42,000, a marker of financial independence, up from 26 years old in 1980.
About a third of adults in their early 20s work full time, a proportion that rises to about half of adults in their late 20s. The labor-force participation rate for young people last year declined to its lowest point in about 40 years, according to the report.
We may have made it easier for many young people to obtain health care, but we as a nation have done a disservice to those same young people. In particular, the failure of our government and quasi-governmental organizations – primarily an obstructionist Congress filled with Libertarian zealots on the Republican side (Rand Paul and Paul Ryan to name but two) and Wall Street Centrist Democrats on the other, as well as policies pursued by the Federal Reserve, SEC, FTC, Commerce Dept. etc. – which favor big business over labor, and the profits of banks and mega-corporations at the expense of the financial well-being of millions of workers.
Economy getting better? Tell that to the young people you know. They will laugh in your face.
