Baby Bust: US births continue their decline

[DINGO Joe]

https://www.apnews.com/0463abca6436472cb44176602078b24f?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP
 Japan says hi!

Welcome to WV!  Amusingly the state slogan is Almost Heaven!  Which I assume is supposed to refer to nature, but when your population skews extremely elderly....

[DINGO Joe]

The decline is pretty much across the board (Maine somehow had 10 more births than the previous year thanks to American Indian and Asian births--really).  Even the Morms are on board with substantial declines in Utah and Idaho. 

[DINGO Joe]

Despite the decline in birthrates for some time now, there's been a steady increase in the number of foster care children

https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/afcarsreport25.pdf

[DINGO Joe]

I think this and nearly stagnant education levels are our two biggest long term problems. Both of these are a death knell for the smaller metros in this country

Smaller metros are not monolithic. Some (like The Villages and Myrtle Beach) are growing very fast. Some aren't.

Aren't those retirement meccas?  I mean with the Boomers hitting 65 in droves you'd expect those to grow.

[DINGO Joe]

Good, that probably means less kids have awful parents.

Are you sure about that, what if it's the middle classes that are forgoing kids?

Well, there has been an especially sharp decline in teen births and that certainly is a plus.

[DINGO Joe]

WV is on track for fewer than 17,000 births this year.  In 1950, they had almost 51,000.

[DINGO Joe]

WV is on track for fewer than 17,000 births this year.  In 1950, they had almost 51,000.

Expanding on this a bit, the Yoy decline for 1Q WV was 8% which makes one wonder if there's incomplete or bad data.  Births in WV were quite static from 2010 thru 2014--20.8 to 20.3k/year.  They fell to 19.8 in 2015 and kept on tanking.  Would have thought there'd be a "Trump Bump" (ha) at some irrational exuberance point, but nope.