The New York Times reports today on the steadily dropping fertility rate of Hispanic women. However, you want to see it in chart form, don’t you? Here it is:
The Hispanic fertility rate declined at a modest rate (about 0.4 percent per year) until the start of the Great Recession in 2007. Over the next four years it fell by 4 percent per year, and then continued dropping by about 2 percent per year after that. By contrast, the white fertility rate has declined only about 0.6 percent per year during the entire ten year period since 2007.
The obvious conclusion from this is that the economy was largely responsible for Hispanic women deciding to have fewer children. However, it’s worth pointing out that two things happened in 2007: (a) the economy went into recession and (b) migration from Mexico to the US declined. Both are likely suspects in the decline of Hispanic fertility.
