Births to Unmarried
Mothers: United States, 1980-92
Birth rates for unmarried women of all
ages and races are high, and rising, according to a new report from the National Center
for Health Statistics. The report, "Births to Unmarried Mothers: United States,
1980-92," presents data on prenatal care, tobacco use, maternal weight gain, and
birthweight. The source of the data for this report is the certificate of live births
filed with the vital records office within each State.
Data Highlights:
The risk that an
unmarried woman will have a baby increased substantially between 1980 and 1991. Measured
by birth rate, this risk increased from 29.4 per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15-44 years in
1980 to 45.2 per 1,000 unmarried women in 1991, a 54-percent rise.
Unmarried mothers
are less likely to receive adequate prenatal care, more likely to smoke during pregnancy,
and less likely to gain adequate weight during pregnancy. As a consequence of these and
other factors, babies born to unmarried women are at an elevated risk of low
birthweight.
Age-specific birth
rates for white unmarried women doubled from 1980 to 1992, while rates for black women in
the same age groups rose much less.