How Big Was the Recession's Toll on Births?

It is hard to argue that The Great Recession didn’t affect the rate in which Americans have children, real estate reporter Neil Shah writes in the Wall Street Journal. But how big was the toll exactly?

The Urban Institute analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and found that birthrates for U.S. women in their 20s dropped more than 15 percent between 2007 and 2012.

In sum, American women had children in 2012 at a pace that would lead to 948 births per 1,000 women in their 20s which is, as the Urban Institute puts it, the slowest pace of any generation of young women in U.S. history.

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