Births Per Woman

What Is This?

The total fertility rate: how many children a woman would have in her lifetime if, at each age, she had them at the rate women that age did that year. The National Center for Health Statistics adds up the birth rates of women in each five-year age group from 10 to 49. Since 1940.

Why Does It Matter?

About 2.1 children per woman is the level at which each generation replaces the one before it, leaving immigration aside. The baby boom, when the rate reached about 3.8 in 1957, filled schools in the 1960s and Social Security's rolls half a century later, so each year's births shape classrooms, workforces, and how many workers support each retiree for decades.

Can Politics Influence It?

At the margins, through child tax credits, paid leave, child care, and housing costs, and more slowly through schooling and work for women. Countries that have paid families generously to have children have usually seen modest gains, some of them births that came sooner rather than more births in all.

Key Idea

It is a snapshot of one year, not a count of any real woman's children. When women put off having children, the rate falls in the years they wait even if they end up with as many in the end, so a falling line can mean later families rather than smaller ones. More children or fewer is a choice, not a verdict, so the line is charted and not scored.

Not Scored