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Forecast, September 1997

No More Baby Booms

by Brad Edmondson

The baby boom begot the baby bust, and the bust begot the boomlet. But after 50 years of rapid and unpredictable change, the trend line for U.S. births has settled down. And young women say they have no plans to create another baby boom in the next two decades, either.

Provisional reports to the National Center for Health Statistics produced an estimate of 3,899,000 live births in the U.S. in 1996, a number almost identical to the 3,892,000 babies born in 1995. Births have slowly declined since their peak of 4,158,000 in 1990, as baby-boomer mothers are being replaced by a much smaller cohort of women. Now the decline may become a flat line. Middle-series projections from the Census Bureau show that births will remain at about 3.9 million a year for the next seven years, then rise to 4 million in 2005, 4.1 million in 2007, and 4.2 million in 2009.

The number of births in the U.S. will fluctuate within a range of 350,000 between 1990 and 2010. Compared with the recent past, that is stability. Births rose from 3.6 million in 1950 to 4.1 million in 1955, as the baby boom gathered momentum. They plunged from 4.3 million in 1960 to 3.8 million in 1965, as it ended. Then they rose again, from 3.8 million in 1985 to their peak in 1990. The waves of change from those events are moving through the age groups now, making it more difficult to anticipate changes in consumer demand. But if the 1990s and 2000s are decades of relative birth stability, it may become easier to make accurate market forecasts.

Within the stable total, however, births are increasingly concentrated among minority groups, especially Hispanics. The share of births for Hispanic women increased from 15 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 1995, the latest year for which such statistics are available. The share of births to non-Hispanic black women increased from 15 to 16 percent. Only 61 percent of births were to non-Hispanic white women in 1995, compared with 64 percent in 1990. In each year, the remaining births were to Asians or other races.

One result of the minority birth boom is that natural increase, or the surplus of births over deaths, peaks where Hispanics live. In 1996, natural increase added 1,558,000 people to the U.S. population. Only 14 percent of U.S. natural increase happened in northeastern states, although the Northeast has 20 percent of the U.S. population. Only 20 percent came to the Midwest, which has 24 percent of the U.S. population. One-third of natural increase happened in the South, home to 35 percent of Americans. The one place where babies still boom is the West, which has 33 percent of natural increase but just 22 percent of population.

Few demographers saw the baby boom coming 50 years ago, and it's possible that another boom could take businesses by surprise. But it isn't likely. The lifetime number of births expected by American women is declining, according to a new analysis of data from the National Survey of Family Growth. In 1995, every group of 100 American women of childbearing age is expected to produce a total of 221 babies. In 1982, a similar group would have expected 238 babies. Expected total births have declined the most for women aged 35 to 44. This is because baby-boom women occupy this age cohort in 1995, and boomer women are more likely than previous generations to remain childless. But women aged 15 to 24 registered only a slight decline in birth expectations between 1982 and 1995. And baby-bust women, who were aged 25 to 29 in 1995, expect to have more children in their lives than baby-boom women did when they were that age.

Statistics on births, deaths, marriages and divorces are issued in the Monthly Vital Statistics Report and occasional supplements to this series. For a free subscription, contact the National Center for Health Statistics; telephone (301) 436-8500. The reports are also posted at this Internet address: http://www.cdc.gov/nchswww/products/pubs/pubd/mvsr/mvsr.htm. Statistics on birth expectations are published in Vital Health Statistics, Series 23, No. 19 and No. 17. Each report is $15 from the Superintendent of Documents, telephone (202) 512-1800; and both are posted at http://www.cdc.gov/nchswww/products/pubs/pubd/series/sr23/ser23.htm. For the Census Bureau's latest population projections, call (301) 457-4100 or go to this Internet address: http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/popproj.html.

Expecting Fewer Births

Source: National Center for Health Statistics

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