Baby Boomlet Pushes Births to First Increase Since 1990

WASHINGTON — Women in their 20s helped fuel a baby boomlet that pushed U.S. births up 2% in 1998, the first increase in several years, said a government report released Tuesday.

The increase reflected growth in the number of women entering childbearing years. These daughters of early baby boomers are having their own children, but getting married first is not necessarily a prerequisite to becoming a parent, the report shows.

Births to unwed mothers, on the rise for years, hit an all-time high in 1998 and accounted for nearly half of all babies born that year, reported the National Center for Health Statistics. But unlike the early 1990s, when teenagers were having children at alarming rates, today’s unwed mothers are more likely to be in their 20s and 30s.

Researchers attribute the change to a big drop in teen births, confidence in the booming economy and more relaxed attitudes about unwed mothers.

There were 3.94 million births in 1998, compared with 3.88 million children born in 1997. The fertility rate, a measure of births among women of childbearing age, was 65.6 births for every 1,000 females, up from 65 births per 1,000.

These were the first increases in births and fertility rates since 1990, when 4.1 million children were born and the fertility rate was 70.9 births per 1,000 women. From 1990 to 1997, the number of births fell 7% as women waited longer to have children and teen births declined amid the availability of more reliable contraceptives, an emphasis on abstinence and AIDS fears.

About 1.29 million babies were born to single women in 1998, up 3% from the year before and the highest number reported since the government started collecting birth data in the early 1900s.

Birthrates for all women in their 20s and 30s also rose. After falling during the 1990s, the birthrate for women ages 20 to 24--the principal childbearing ages--rose 1% to 111.2 births per 1,000. The rate for women 30 to 34 rose 2% to 87.4 births per 1,000 women--the highest rate since 1965.

Jacqueline Darroch of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a private research group, said the rise in unmarried mothers doesn’t necessarily mean that children don’t have fathers. She cited a government study showing 2.6 million unmarried mothers living with partners.