TX & HC 2022 overall fertility rates rose, led by Hispanic women 25-44. Teen overall fertility rates rose for first time in 15 years, while national rate fell. Fertility rates and birth timing trends varied by race/ethnicity.
The 2022 overall fertility rate rose 2% in Texas and 2.9% in Harris County after Texas’s 2021 six-week abortion ban (see Figures 1 & 2), most markedly among Hispanic Women and specifically among Hispanic women 25-44 years old, who saw aggregated fertility rate rises of 8.0% and 8.5%, respectively, while rate changes for Non-Hispanic (NH) women 25-44 were much lower.
Texas and Harris County teen fertility rates (for women 15 to 19) rose for the first time in 15 years though the national fertility rate continued to fall. The effect on Texas teen fertility rates also differed by race/ ethnicity: while fertility rates rose among Hispanic, NH Black and NH Asian teens in 2022, they continued to fall among NH White teens.
Here’s a link to my recent piece in the Nation on policies restricting rights for women and LGBTQ people in the US and their common core: fertility control.
In 2021, per the CDC, the US birth rate rose nationally by 1%— from 56 births / 1,000 fertile women (those 15 to 44 years old) to 56.6 births, regaining some of the 4% loss in 2020.
2020. Among 2020 births only those in December (babies conceived in March) would be directly affected by Covid-19. That would have been a pretty big quarantine effect if the decline were all due to Covid (though certainly a rise in abortions and/or miscarriages due to Covid-19 could also have played in). Instead, the 2020 decline seems to be largely an ongoing effect of the decline underway since 2007 (-19.2% 2007-2020).
2021. The recently released 2021 data reveals that the 13-year fairly steady decline in births (this was the first rise since 2014) was curtailed in the remainder of 2020 and the first part of 2021, though we can’t yet tell how that maps onto the pandemic (it would be nice to see the data broken out by month). But the 2021 rise was small, especially relative to the 4% decline the year prior.
Notably most of the 2021 rise in births was to women25 and over.Births to teenscontinued to decline in 2021, falling by 6% in 2021, for a total fall since the start of the recession in 2007 of 65.4%. Much of that fall is due to the use of LARCs (Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptives), and it seems not to have been affected by the Covid rise (the decline among teens may even have been furthered by the quarantine). Likewise women 20-24 continued to see a decline in births – by 2% in 2021, for a total fall since 2007 of 41.7%.
This suggests we may be beginning to see some the “ripple effect of delay” predicted here in prior years, whereby young women who chose not to start families in their teens begin to have them later. Births to women 25-29 rose 2%, to women 30-34 rose 3%, to women 35-39 rose 5%, and among women 40 and over, 3%.
But since the Provisional Birth Data Report published last week doesn’t break out births by birth order, we’ll have to wait for the Final 2021 birth data (likely in November, at the earliest) to get a real sense — since only then will we see that data and be able to tell if 2021’s 1% rise mostly involved older women having their first birth or a later child. Or if the rise occurred across both groups.
In 2020, the world’s first year of living dangerously with Covid, a smaller share of Americans had children than in the year prior. Most of this birth rate fall was part of the ongoing trend toward decline that has been underway since 2007 (December 2007 saw the start of the Great Recession, which ended in June 2009).
Because the pandemic started in March 2020, the only month in which children born in 2020 were conceived during the pandemic was December (children conceived in April 2020 = born in 2021), though decisions around termination of pregnancies conceived before March may have been affected by the pandemic as well. Potential parents’ choices around procreation over the rest of 2020 and beyond will only be fully apparent when we see the birth data for 2021.
The overall birth rate fell from 58.3 births per fertile woman (age 15-44) in 2019 to 56 in 2020, a decline of 4%.Since 2007, the birth rate among US women overall has fallen 19.2%.
Births to teens (age 15-19) fell from16.7in 2019 to 15.4 in 2020, a decline of 7.8%. This seems likely to have been affected by both increased use of contraception and diminished social contact due to quarantines in March 2020. Since 2007, the birth rate among US teens 15-19 has fallen 62.9%, due in major part to the availability of Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARCs). This links to an increased ability among teens to complete high school and establish at work (high school graduation rates increased by 7 percentage points, from 79% to 86%, between 2010 and 2019, per the National Center for Education Statistics – further data yet to be released).
Rates to non-teens decreased across the board between 2019 and 2020, as follows: The birthrate for women 20-24 declined 5.4%; the rate for women 25-29 declined 3.7%; for women 30-34 it was 3.5%; for women 35-39, 1.9%; and for women 40-44 the rate declined 1.7% between 2019 and 2020. Of these rates, all had been falling previously except those for women 35-39 and 40-44.
Longer term, between 2007 and 2020, the birthrates for teens (as noted above) declined 62.9%. For women 20-24 the rate declined 40.2%; the rate for women 25-29 declined 23.6%; for women 30-34 it was 5.6%; for women 35-39, the birth rate rose 8.8%; and for women 40-44 the rate rose 22.9%. This suggests an ongoing pattern of delayed childbearing as well as what may prove to be an increase in the proportion of women (and men) remaining childfree. Women who refrain from having children early on may still raise the same number of children if they start later, but we won’t know the overall ripple effect of delay on individuals’ total fertility until those in their teens and 20s in 2007 and after reach their mid 40s. Delay will also affect individuals’ education, workforce-participation and earning levels.
Happy to share a quick introduction to my new book – out in 2021 from U Delaware Press/Rutgers UP. Link to Rosenbach Book Talk.
Until recently, the 53 poems of Marianne Moore’s last two decades (23 published in the New Yorker) have been largely ignored by critics. Apparition of Splendor examines them as a distinct set, exploring the wide range of issues they engage with or raise, offering in-depth readings of many and arguing that the later work is interesting and rich – and worthy of further study.
MM’s Collected Poems won 3 major prizes* in one year (1952) and she became well known as a “prize winner.” In this period, Moore created a celebrity performance persona, which often involved her crossdressing as George Washington. Her work appeared in print in venues of all brow levels as did many stories about her, and she appeared widely—at readings, at events and on TV and on radio, engaging and entertaining her enormous audience of fans.
[*The Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize.]
Moore began her poetic career in the 19-teens and twenties as among the “highest” of “high moderns” (read: pretty obscure to the general reading public). But ever since those early days, she had already been evolving her work to make it more accessible, to a wider audience – through emotion and humor. She became widely known during WW2 as a patriotic poet, through poems like “What Are Years?” and “In Distrust of Merits.”
In the postwar context of new, democratizing mass media and a heightened celebrity culture that crossed classes and tastes, Moore presented thought-provoking material in new and entertaining ways in order to engage and amuse audiences of all brow levels, in a range of popular journals. Her readers might reflect on this material or not, to the extent they preferred, but all would confront difference in some form in engaging with Moore and her poetry and learn something about democracy and diversity from that encounter.
Whereas her early poems enacted authority through an elite position even as they questioned the hierarchies that position rested upon, her later poems continued that questioning from a popular position that allowed her to advance a democratic agenda through a performance that combined comedy with serious cultural reflection, often on issues of equity and access.
Among the topics touched on in AOS:
•Moore’s comedic performance / persona
•her democratic / anti-racist poetry
•her habitual ekphrases
•her inclusive poetry of current events & shared culture
•her celebrity activism
•her cross-brow / high-low poetry
•her modeling nonconformist sexuality
•her poetry’s relation to younger contemporaries’
•the dialogue among her poems
•her many poems about aging, death & legacy
•her “reveal and veil” presence in poems
•her work’s dialogues with Blake and others
•her occasional poetry – and later readers
•the evolution of her poetics over decades
•the role of shape and form (literal images)
•her modeling elderly female authority
•her habits of revision and omission
•and more!
Photo by Esther Bubley, 1953, appeared in Life Magazine as part of a story on Moore’s amusingly incongruous persona. Note the tools/weaponry at right.
First published in The Nation (Dec. 14, 2021): LINK
Though sex-based discrimination is no longer legal, it still structures American employment. Passing the Build Back Better bill could finally change that.
Is sex discrimination in employment illegal? Congress isn’t sure. It enacted a Jobs for Men bill; however, it’s still waffling on the Jobs for Women follow-up. The nation knows we need the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s improved roads, bridges, green tech, and broadband services—and (coincidentally?) the hundreds of thousands of good jobs these things require will largely go to men, in the current work scheme.
But some aren’t sure we need the kind of infrastructure support embedded (along with other programs) in the Build Back Better (BBB) Act, which both creates a million-plus well-paid care jobs (largely filled by women initially) and allows the mothers of the kids newly in care to take jobs in all fields. In a post-BBB world, those fields could include infrastructure jobs, from which women were long excluded—largely because of lack of child care, which kept mothers’ from working full-time. Likewise, if child care is well-paid, it can attract male workers. BBB will destabilize the gendered work- and wage-assignment system currently weighing us down.
[Houston Chronicle, 9/23/21] Texas’s new abortion law has captured national headlines, but the sad fact is that, after years of chipping away, Texas was already tied for 47th nationally in women’s equality. Real change will mean not just ending this ban, but the attitudes behind it. Texans can use this moment to do more than stop the slide. Time to elect leaders who can envision a whole new trajectory and build a thriving economy of care.
Misogyny — a Greek word that means contempt for women — is an economic strategy as well as a feeling. Denial of women’s rights long ensured that they do much essential work for free and without representation. That includes bearing and rearing the next generation of workers. Currently, the economic model here is one of desperation, with misogyny as the linchpin. But having an economy that rewards rather than exploits care would generate both prosperity and well-being for all.
Quick overview of the shameful scene: Through gender and racial bias, Harris County full-time working women’s wages have long been through the floor, with white women making 70 cents on the dollar compared to white men in 2019, black women 45 cents and Hispanic women 37.5 cents. Part-time workers and those who are undocumented make even less. Texas ranks 50th in its percentage of uninsured adults (which is correlated with high maternal mortality among many other health shortfalls); the foster care system (where many unplanned children end up) is awful; and Texas ranks 43rd in educational investment per student. Forget adequate affordable child care to allow moms to work. Low taxes, low services — no surprise!
When businesses enjoy low tax rates, the government doesn’t adequately support children, or sick and elderly Texans. Unpaid or low-paid women — the default care infrastructure — bear the brunt of the cleanup work to fill the gaps, though they can only do a part of what’s needed. All this creates female poverty rates 44 percent higher than those of males, leaving women more vulnerable to domestic violence.
The relationship of the state to its female population is itself a form of domestic abuse. If Texas men don’t really dislike Texas women that much, it’s time to speak up, lads!
In spite of these realities, over the past 173 years American women have made gains — in status, education and economic independence. Those gains can partly be attributed to greater control over their own fertility. Notably, it was through a suit against a Texas case that Roe v. Wade improved the options of women across the nation. Ability to plan when and if to have children allows women to complete their schooling and move up in their careers — growing the workforce and the knowledge base. It lets them better support their kids when they have them and gives them civic voice.
This has much improved U.S. productivity as women buoy the GDP and spend their earnings. But some dislike the change. Allowing the so-called “Texas Taliban” to break that circuit of societal prosperity undermines the whole economy, while furthering the political ambitions of a few.
The abortion ban was only one among a slew of these kinds of bills. The 87th Legislature expanded gun access (more violence against women), reduced voter rights (cutting access to elect women) and persists in its anti-male-to-female transgender efforts (punishing people who choose to identify as women). With these the Legislature has carved a new rock bottom for misogyny, adding threats of suit to anyone who protests.
Will Texans fall for the bounty threats and stay silent, or will we stand up for Texas women? Is there hope for a different state?
Definitely. It’s because change is underway that these new clampdown laws have been enacted. But it won’t happen on its own. It will take strategy, pressure from all sides and a massive movement. The goal shouldn’t be a return to the old status quo: a Texas economy of care could lead the nation.
The biggest allies for change should be in the business world since this ban’s bad for the bottom line. So where are the employers decrying this law? When the courts enforced Roe v. Wade, many ostensibly “pro-women” businesses could avoid making a stand that offended the anti-choice leadership, and their largely elderlyvoter base. That abortion calculus has cratered, and employers must consider their workforce and their customers. Will working women stick around in Texas for random vigilante suits against whomever, topped off by bullying harassment at the polls? Will the business infrastructure survive if the courts, already backed up by COVID, are swamped by the $10,000 per suit bait?
Texas depends on streams of non-native workers, from states that invest more in education, to fill skilled jobs. In Harris County, 54 percent of workers with college degrees, under 40, born out of state are women. Given the darkening scene, many will leave, and fewer people will choose to relocate here. There are many good jobs elsewhere, in states with less misogyny, more functional electric grids and fewer hurricanes. Native Texans will also exit if the state they love won’t love them back.
And of course, there will be Texas boycotts. Nationally, per Gallup, 80 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal — either in all cases (32 percent), or with some restrictions (48 percent). But the new law disallows all abortions after the first six weeks, a period of time in which many women don’t even know they are pregnant, with no exceptions. This “concern” for fetuses is seconded by substandard care for the babies that result.
This unconstitutional misogyny will magnify poverty in a state that is already ranked the 12th poorest in America. Those unable to travel will be most affected, forced to find whatever work they can — in kitchens or brothels — to feed expanded families. But the evidence of women’s low status will cast a pall on everyone.
Cheap workers may be part of the goal of these policies, but the major aim of the ban seems to be drawing anti-abortion primary voters. This time, pro-choice voters will flock to the polls as well. If candidates run not just on ending the abortion ban but on uprooting the misogyny and building a robust care infrastructure, this moment can incite transformative change that will benefit all.
Texans — male and female, young and old, Democrat and Republican, workers and employers — who believe women should control their own fertility must speak out against the misogyny and its hugely negative ripple effects. Stand up for Texas women: Bans off our bodies! Silence would be the real crime here.
