Free Republic

On Nov. 4, the hope and happiness seemed boundless for supporters of President-elect Barack Obama, leading some to speculate, with a wink and a nod, that in nine months there would be a virtual Obama baby boom -- a celebratory uptick in the national birthrate. But now, 40 weeks later -- the average human gestation period -- MSNBC is reporting the prediction has largely been nothing more than, well, false hope. In Chicago, ground zero for Obama's election celebration, area hospitals confirm that they have not seen a noticeable surge in births. "Research evidence gives scant support for a one-day...

snip Americans are having fewer babies snip “It’s the recession,” said Andrew Hacker, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York. “Children are the most expensive item in every family’s budget, especially given all the gear kids expect today. So it’s a good place to cut back when you’re uncertain about the future.” In 2007, the number of births in the United States broke a 50-year-old record high, set during the baby boom. But last year, births began to decline nationwide, by nearly 2 percent, according to provisional figures released last week. Those figures from the...

Thousands of couples in India who agreed to put off having babies for at least two years after their wedding will collect cash payments this month as health officials attempt to curb the country's rapidly growing population. Neighbouring China shows the first signs of relaxing its strict policy of one child per couple in the face of an ageing population, India is searching for a way of restricting the size of families as the battle over scarce resources grows. The country's population stands at 1.2 billion and is expected to reach 1.53 billion by 2050. But increasing pressure on resources...

California had 14,570 fewer births in 2008 than in the previous year, a 2.6 percent drop that surprised demographers with its size. It was the first annual decline in births since 2001, when the state was last mired in a recession. While the economy is one likely cause, the migration of young Latinas in their prime childbearing years out of California, and a slowdown of illegal immigration, are ongoing factors that could cut into the state's future population growth if they continue. "In the kind of economy we have, it's possible that people are opting not to have children that...

Since Estonia regained independence, the birth rate of Estonians has been negative, but in 2008, nearly 600 Estonians more were born than died, writes EPL Online/LETA. The birth rate of the entire population of Estonia remained negative, however – in 2008, Estonia lost 647 residents. In the year 1992 – the first year after regaining of independence – Estonians' birth rate was minus 755, a year later the birth rate among Estonians had fallen to minus 2,731. The year 1994 was the worst one in terms of birth rate since regaining of independence – 4,323 persons more died than were...

A recent U.S. Bureau of Census report indicates that 40% of unwed births in the U.S. in 2007 were out of wedlock. In California that percentage was 41.1%. What the press failed to report however is that Latinos represented 65%, or about two thirds, of all the unwed births in California. As a category, Whites came in a distant second at nearly 19%. See retabulated U.S. Census data below: California Unwed Births 2007 Total Unwed Births: 232,966 Total Wed & Unwed Births: 566,352 Unwed Births: Latino 151,440 65.1% White 43,660 18.7% Black 22,879 9.8% Asian 12,630 5.4% American Indian 2,357...

ATLANTA – 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. ... 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.

PARIS (AFP) France cemented its status as Europe's fertility champion on Tuesday when fresh statistics showed women are having on average more than two children each, an increase from last year's birth rate. The second most populous country in the European Union after Germany, France began 2009 with 64.3 million inhabitants, 366,500 more than in 2008, according to the national statistics agency INSEE. While there are fewer women of child-bearing age in France, the birth rate has continued to climb, with 2.02 children on average born to every woman in 2008, up from 1.98 in 2007. Last year, more than...

"TOKYO (AFP) -- The number of children in Japan has fallen for the 27th straight year to hit a new low, the government said Monday in a sign of the country's rapidly ageing population. Children aged 14 or younger numbered 17,250,000 as of April 1, down by 130,000 from a year earlier, the internal affairs ministry said in an annual survey released to coincide with the May 5 Children's Day national holiday. The figure is the lowest since 1950 when comparable data started. The ratio of children to the total population sank for 34 years in a row to 13.5...

McALLEN, Texas (CBS News) ― It was 5 a.m. and CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts is with a woman who is nine months pregnant. She's rushed to a south Texas hospital to undergo a C-section - a $4,700 medical procedure that won't cost her a dime. She qualifies for emergency Medicaid. She gave birth to a healthy, 8 1/2 pound baby boy - born in America. His Mexican mother gave him an American name: Eliot. Eliot is one of an estimated 300,000 children of illegal immigrants born in the United States every year, according to the Pew Hispanic Center....

ATLANTA - Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years. The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too. An Associated Press review of birth numbers dating to 1909 found the total number of U.S. births was the highest since 1961, near the...

New Mexico's birth rate in 2005 exceeded the national average, despite a long-term decline in the state's birth rate for teen mothers, according to a new health department report. The New Mexico Department of Health's 2005 New Mexico Selected Health Statistics Annual Report says: # New Mexico residents gave birth to 28,822 babies in 2005. The state's 2005 birth rate of 14.6 percent slightly exceeded the U.S. rate of 14 in 2004, the latest year available. # Single mothers accounted for half the state's births in 2005. # The birth rate of New Mexicans ages 15 to 19 decreased 22.8...

WASHINGTON, August 3, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As Congress works today to pass HR 3162, a bill which includes opening abstinence funding to states that want to teach contraception to teens, a new analysis of government data shows that increases in abstinence education funding coincide with decreasing teen birth rates. Young, African-American unmarried teens (ages 10-14) had the most drastic decrease, with their birth rates being the lowest in recorded history. The birth rates for all teens ages 10-14 are the lowest in 40 years. In addition, the birth rates for all teens ages 15-19 are the lowest in 20 years. Specifically,...

MY WIFE AND I just had an abortion. Two, actually. We walked into a doctor's office in downtown Los Angeles with four thriving fetuses — two girls and two boys — and walked out an hour later with just the girls, whom we will name, if we're lucky enough to keep them, Rosalind and Vivian. Rosalind is my mother's name. We didn't want to. We didn't mean to. We didn't do anything wrong, which is to say, we did everything right. Four years ago, when Tina and I set out on this journey to have children, such a circumstance was...

Immigrants and children of immigrants keep U.S. population young Washington – A steady stream of immigrants to the United States and moderate growth keep the U.S. population younger than other developed countries, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which projects population in the United States on New Year’s Day 2007 to be 301 million people. Younger population growth keeps the economy and society vital, William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told USINFO. “With people coming into our country from around the world, as a population overall, we have become more open to new ideas,” Frey said....

Over the past years, a new demographic crisis has emerged as a subject of intense debate: the most affluent, most advanced, freest societies of the world are not having enough children to sustain themselves. Recent books—including Phillip Longman’s The Empty Cradle (2004) and Ben J. Wattenberg’s Fewer (2004)—have described the potentially tragic consequences of this decline. Lamenting the collapse of modern birthrates, world leaders as diverse as Vladimir Putin and Pope Benedict XVI have advocated pro-natalist state policies. Popular magazines and newspapers that once worried about the horrors of a “population explosion”—mass starvation in developing countries, environmental catastrophe, the subjugation...

8-May-2006 -- ZENIT.org News AgencyZENIT material may not be reproduced without permission. Permission can be requested at info@zenit.org LOTS OF DATA POINT TO FEWER BIRTHS  ROME, MAY 8, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI cited an "urgent need" for reflection in the area of demography, in a message he sent April 28 to participants in a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Experts agree that an increase in life expectancies is being met with a drop in birthrates, the Pope noted. Societies are aging and "many nations or groups of nations lack a sufficient number of young people to renew...

When it comes to marriage and babies, the red states really are different from the blue states, according to a new Census Bureau analysis of marriage, fertility and socioeconomic characteristics. People in the Northeast marry later and are more likely to live together without marriage and less likely to become teenage mothers than are people in the South.... In New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, about 5 percent of babies are born to teenage mothers, while in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, South Carolina, Texas and Wyoming, 10 percent or more of all births are to teenage mothers....

The government said Friday it would give cash bonuses to Greek mothers who have more than two babies, in an effort to boost the country's birth rate as the population ages. According to a draft law to be presented later this year, mothers would receive a tax-free, one-time payment of $2,444 for every child after the second, the Finance Ministry said. From 2007, the sum would rise to $3,055 per child, it said in a statement. Families with at least three children would also pay less tax on new cars. The Greek government, which already offers benefits such as tax...

Steve Mraz / S&S Air Force Staff Sgt. Sarah Lukens cuddles with her 2-day-old son, Braxton Hunter Lukens, on Monday at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. While Lukens delivered at Landstuhl, some pregnant women are having to give birth in German hospitals because of a rise in military pregnancies. Steve Mraz / S&S Sabine van Riel, chief midwife at St. Johannis-Krankenhaus in Landstuhl, Germany, tends to a newborn at the German hospital. Dealing with the latest baby boom A deployment-related baby boom in the Kaiserslautern and Baumholder, Germany, military communities means many women must deliver their children in German hospitals...

The population of the European Union will fall dramatically by 2050, even allowing for the arrival of millions of immigrants, an official survey reported yesterday. Deaths would begin to outnumber births across the EU in the next five years, it predicted. A collapse in childbirth rates and increased emigration has already caused populations to start shrinking in several of the former communist countries of eastern and central Europe that joined the EU last year. The survey by the EU's statistics agency, Eurostat, showed that by 2013 the population of Italy would start to fall, joined a year later by Germany...

Global Campaign Aims to Record Every Birth Tue Feb 22, 5:03 PM ET U.S. National - AP By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS - Archbishop Desmond Tutu launched a global campaign Tuesday to record the birth of every child, saying nearly 50 million babies born every year are not registered and thus have no official identity and often no right to education or health care. The United Nations (news - web sites) Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 imposed an obligation on countries to register every child immediately after birth. Sixteen years later,...

A 100 Year Difference What a difference 100 yrs makes... The Year is 1904. Maybe this will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! Here are some of the US statistics for 1904: The average life expectancy in the US was 47 years. Only 14% of the homes in the US had a bathtub. Only 8%of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.00 There were only 8,000 cars in the US, and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. Alabama, Mississippi,...

Quiz time. The Chicago Cubs blew it again this year. The main reason for this failure is: 1. The Cubs sustained more injuries than other major league clubs did. 2. The team has too many whiners unwilling to take responsibility for their own pathetic performances. 3. The Cubs’ tradition of choking is simply too strong to break. 4. Steve Stone. 5. George W. Bush. ....read on......

The Emperor Has No Clothes By: Brian Tracy John Kerry is neither a “war hero” nor a “patriot.” It is about time that someone pointed out that “the emperor has no clothes” and that Americans are being presented with a false choice. If you read the newspapers long enough, a series of facts emerge that appear undeniable and irrefutable. But no one seems to want to “connect the dots” for fear of offending the powers that be in the national media, such as CBS. Here is what we know. First of all, Kerry did not “volunteer” for service in Vietnam....

Death rate still high in Russia 07/26/2004 11:50 Death rate still exceeds birth rate, although the number of live births is growing The number of the jobless population in Russia in June of the current year reduced by only 0.1 percent vs. June of 2003, having made up five million seven hundred and forty thousand people. In percentage, it makes 7.9 of the economically active population, the Federal State Statistics Service reported. The number of the officially registered unemployed gained 1.4 percent over the same period - up to one million five thousand and fifty-six people. About 334.5 thousand jobless...

St. Petersburg residents are having more children, marrying more and later, statisticians say. They also use surrogate mothers more frequently than before, and prefer to marry Americans more than other foreigners. This summary of the city's births, deaths and marriages in 2003 was released by the St. Petersburg Civil Registry Office, or ZAGS on Wednesday. The only pessimistic signs of the latest research was that exactly half of marriages break up, and that the city's birth rate remains the lowest in the country. "The number of births in St. Petersburg increased to 40,700 in 2003 compared to 37,720 born in...

The birth rate in Russia is growing steadily. In 2001 the number of new-borns was 1,300,000 and in 2002 - 1,400,000. Demographers expect that this year's figure will increase by at least 100,000. Meanwhile, infant mortality has decreased from 16.9 for every 1,000 new-borns in 1999 to 13.9 in 2002. Surveys show that 35 per cent of young mothers under 24 want to have three children. Still, it is too early to speak of a demographic surge. Russia's population declines by 1 million people annually and, according to UN estimates, by 2050 will only be 101.5 million instead of the...

(IsraelNN.com) 50 infants, 28 girls and 22 boys, were born during the Rosh Hashanah holiday. This includes two sets of twins.

<p>WASHINGTON - Almost one in four who gave birth last year had a Caesarean section, the highest rate in 13 years and an increase fueled by repeat operations and women who schedule C-sections for convenience.</p> <p>C-sections had dropped in the early 1990s after an outcry that American women were getting too many. But in 1997, they started inching back up again. Last year brought the biggest jump yet, a 7 percent increase that "was certainly a surprise," said Joyce Martin, co-author of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention birth report that was released Thursday.</p>