Whites are the only group with chronically below replacement fertility over the past two decades. />
“For the first time in 35 years, the U.S. fertility rate has climbed high enough to sustain a stable population, solidifying the nation’s unique status among industrialized countries.” U.S. Fertility Rate Hits 35-Year High, Stabilizing Population, By Rob Stein, Washington Post, December 21, 2007
Thus begins a Washington Post article celebrating news that our women are finally having enough babies to forestall a population decline.
The year 2006 saw more babies born here than in any year since 1961 and the largest increase in births since 1989. [Centers for Disease Control, National Vital Statistics Reports, “Births: Preliminary Data for 2006,” December 5, 2007. PDF ]
More importantly, the birth spike pushed the total fertility rate—the expected number of babies born to women over their lifetime – to 2.1, according to the Census Bureau. That figure is considered the “replacement rate”—the rate at which a generation can exactly replace itself.
The Hispanic share of the birth spike (42 percent) is nearly three-times their population share (15 percent). “Anchor babies” are certainly a factor, but the birth data doesn’t report the mother’s citizenship status—yet another example of the systematic of government to ask possibly embarrassing questions about our post-1965 immigration disaster.
Meanwhile, non-Hispanic whites (two-thirds of the population) accounted for just 24 percent of 2006’s birth pop.
As for white women, their fertility rate rose in 2006 and is higher than their European counterparts. But they are still having babies at well below the replacement rate—and increasingly below the rates of U.S. blacks and Hispanics….