Baby bust persists for Iowa, U.S.

Iowa's baby production remains in a slump, even as the state's economy continues to rebound.

The state recorded 39,013 births last year, up less than 1 percent from the 38,686 in 2012, new figures from the Iowa Department of Public Health show. The latest total is still nearly 5 percent lower than the 40,835 babies born in Iowa in 2007, the year before the economy cratered.

Here's a simpler way to look at it: If Iowa had kept producing babies at the 2007 rate, the state would have nearly 11,000 more children than it has today.

A similar baby bust is being reported across the country. Experts say birth rates often fall during recessions, apparently because people lose confidence that they can support a growing family.

Birth rates tend to rebound eventually, said Gretchen Livingston, a national demographer for the Pew Research Center.

"How long is eventually? That's a little hard to guess," she said.

Livingston noted that the national fertility rate inched down to a record low in 2013. That rate, which was 62.9, measures the number of babies born for every 1,000 women ages 15 through 44.

Iowa's fertility rate has been running a bit higher than the nation's, rising a tad to 66.8 in 2013. The state also calculates the number of births per 1,000 residents. That rate was 12.6 in 2012 and 2013. In 2007, it was 13.7.

University of Iowa economics professor Alice Schoonbroodt, who has studied the economy's effect on birth rates, said it's hard to tell how much of the current slump is temporary. "The longer we go with no change, the more we're led to believe it's something permanent," she said.

Schoonbroodt suspects the birth rate will bounce back soon, but she's less confident of that prediction than she was a year or two ago.

Birth rates tend to rise and fall with the economy, but they also have been trending down overall for several decades as Americans have favored smaller families. During the baby boom years from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, Iowa's birth rate was roughly double what it is now. More than 60,000 babies were born in Iowa every year from 1947 through 1962. The state hasn't broken 50,000 since 1965.

Livingston said the baby boom was a historical exception, however. After those two decades, birth rates dropped back to long-standing patterns, then gradually fell further, she said.

Part of the explanation could be that marriage rates have declined, Livingston said. Although many women have babies outside of marriage, they don't tend to have as many, she said. Also, she said, many women are delaying motherhood until later in life, which gives them fewer years of child-bearing potential.

The recent decline in births is not due to more women deciding to have abortions. In fact, Iowa's abortion numbers plummeted from 6,649 in 2007 to 4,648 in 2012, a drop of 30 percent, the health department reported. (The abortion total for 2013 is not yet available.)

The recent decline in births also is not due to aging of the population. That effect was prevalent a decade or more ago, as women in the baby boom generation aged out of prime childbearing years, but it no longer makes much difference year to year.

Family planning advocates believe the main reason for the decline in births is that couples are using careful birth control. The advocates point in particular to the increased use of long-acting methods, such as intrauterine devices and hormone implants. They say that a decline in unintended pregnancies can be a good thing, because children tend to fare better if their parents were prepared to start a family.

The question is whether more couples will make such plans now that the economy is improving. Time will tell.

Births to teens sink

The overall decline in Iowa births includes a significant decline in births to teens, which public health officials tout as a victory.

Iowa teens gave birth to 2,298 babies last year, according to the Iowa Department of Public Health. That was less than 6 percent of all births, down from 9 percent in 2008.

Nationally, teen birth rates have dropped by more than half since 1990, federal experts reported earlier this year. Public health advocates say this is mainly because of education efforts, though they note that teen birth rates are still higher here than in most other wealthy countries.

Overall teen birth rates peaked in the 1950s, then declined sharply as birth control became more widely available in the 1960s and '70s. The rates bumped back up a bit in the late 1980s, then began another steady drop.