Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Dec;57(6):2035-2045.
doi: 10.1007/s13524-020-00929-w.

Recent Trends in U.S. Childbearing Intentions

Caroline Sten Hartnett  1 , Alison Gemmill  2
Affiliations

Recent Trends in U.S. Childbearing Intentions

Caroline Sten Hartnett et al. Demography. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

The U.S. period total fertility rate has declined steadily since the Great Recession, reaching 1.73 children in 2018, the lowest level since the 1970s. This pattern could mean that current childbearing cohorts will end up with fewer children than previous cohorts, or this same pattern could be an artifact of a tempo distortion if individuals are simply postponing births they plan to eventually have. In this research note, we use data on current parity and future intended births from the 2006-2017 National Survey of Family Growth to shed light on this issue. We find that total intended parity declined (from 2.26 in 2006-2010 to 2.16 children in 2013-2017), and the proportion intending to remain childless increased slightly. Decomposition indicates that the decline was not due to changes in population composition but rather changes in the subgroups' rates themselves. The decline in intended parity is particularly notable at young ages and among those who are Hispanic. These results indicate that although tempo distortion is likely an important contributor to the decline in TFR, it is not the sole explanation: U.S. individuals are intending to have fewer children than their immediate predecessors, which may translate into a decline in cohort completed parity. However, the change in intended parity is modest, and average intended parity remains above two children.

Keywords: Childbearing; Fertility; Fertility intentions; Intended parity.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Bailey, M. J., Guldi, M. E., & Hershbein, B. J. (2013). Is there a case for a “second demographic transition”? Three distinctive features of the post-1960 U.S. fertility decline (NBER Working Paper No. 19599). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
    1. Beaujouan, É., & Berghammer, C. (2019). The gap between lifetime fertility intentions and completed fertility in Europe and the United States: A cohort approach. Population Research and Policy Review, 38, 507–535. - DOI
    1. Cabella, W., & Nathan, M. (2018). Challenges posed by low fertility in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York, NY: United Nations Population Fund.
    1. Daugherty, J., & Martinez, G. (2016). Birth expectations of U.S. women aged 15–44 (NCHS Data Brief No. 260). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
    1. Ely, D. M., & Hamilton, B. E. (2018). Trends in fertility and mother’s age at first birth among rural and metropolitan counties: United States, 2007–2017 (NCHS Data Brief No. 323). Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

LinkOut - more resources