Birthrate Down Slightly in the US, More Women Choosing to Give Birth Later in Life

The teen birth rate dropped 6 percent in 2012 while more women in their 30s and 40s were giving birth, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday.

Fewer than 4 million babies were born in the U.S. last year, 653 less than the number in 2011, according to the CDC report.

The report noted teenage girls giving birth hit a historic low in 2012 - about 300,000 babies were born to teens last year, less than half of the 645,000 that were born to teen moms in 1970, and down 6 percent from 2011.

"Our data comes from the birth certificate that parents complete at the hospital and it provides a wealth of information," says Brady E. Hamilton, a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics and the lead author of the report. But to figure out why the teen birth rate is falling, "we have to rely on other sources," Hamilton says, such as surveys that the CDC conducts of high schoolers.

"What we have seen is greater availability of much more effective birth control methods," says Santelli. While condom use increased substantially in the 1990s and early 2000s among high schoolers, it actually declined slightly after that, according to the CDC survey.

Meanwhile, the proportion of women in their 30s and early 40s who had babies rose. The birthrate for women in their late 40s held steady. This suggests more couples are choosing to wait longer to have children due to the unstable economy or other factors.

"People are starting families later and later, and these are historical changes and happening worldwide," says Santelli. "The last downturn in the economy has accelerated the trend."

However, women in their 20s gave birth to more babies than women in any other age group - a total of 2,040,878 babies in 2012. But the birth rate among these twentysomethings continued to drop. In fact, the 83.1 births per 1,000 women ages 20 to 24 represents a record low for the U.S.