Out-of-Wedlock Births Rise Sharply Among Most Groups

American women are having babies out of wedlock at an escalating rate, with the largest percentage increases occurring among white, employed, and college-educated women, according to a Census Bureau report released today.

The biggest percentage of out-of-wedlock births--almost half--continues to occur, however, among black women and women who have not completed high school.

The report, “Fertility of American Women: June 1992,” notes that nearly one in four (24%) of all single women between the ages of 18 and 44 had given birth as of June, 1992, up from about one in seven (15%) a decade ago.

Contrary to popular perceptions that unwed motherhood is a phenomenon primarily of poor, under-educated and jobless women, the report discloses that the incidence of out-of-wedlock childbearing crosses nearly every demographic strata.

“Increasing proportions of never-married mothers are being recorded in various socioeconomic groups,” the report states. “Increasing proportions of never-married women in the labor force and among those working in managerial or professional occupations are reported having had an out-of-wedlock birth.”

Amara Bachu, a Census statistician and demographer who produced the report, said the changing values, diminishing stigmas and liberation from gender-based roles contributed to the increases.

“The social values have changed,” Bachu said. “The values of today are more flexible and more tolerant than they were, even as recently as 1982.”

Growth in single motherhood has been particularly sharp among affluent and well-schooled single women. For example, the number of unmarried women with one or more years of college who gave birth more than doubled, from 5.5% in 1982 to 11.3% in 1992.

The proportion of single mothers among women who did not finish high school rose from 35.2% in 1982 to 48.4% in 1992.

The ratio of never-married mothers in managerial and professional occupations more than doubled from 3.1% in 1982 to 8.2% in 1992. Among unemployed women, the rate dropped from 29.4% to 26.2% in 1992, while it rose for working women from 11.1% to 15.5%

Out-of-wedlock births increased in every region in the country. The highest percentage, 21.6%, occurred in the South, up from 19.6%; the lowest, 16.4%, occurred in the West, up from 11.2% in 1982.

In California, the percentage of unmarried mothers was sharply higher than the national figure--33.3% in 1991, the latest year for which such statistics are available from the state Health Services Department.

Los Angeles County had the highest rate of any county in the state--40.8% of all live births were to unwed mothers. That was up from 30.9% in 1985, according to state figures.

The study, one of the Census Bureau’s monthly demographic surveys, involved written questionnaires and face-to-face interviews in a sample of 60,000 households across the United States in June, 1992.

Florence Bonner, chairwoman of the Sociology Department at Howard University, played down the changes in societal values as the primary reason for the study’s results. Instead, she said, many women have been affected by the nation’s soaring divorce rates over the past 30 years and have been reluctant to get married.

“This is not a real flash or surprising development given the soaring divorce rates during the past generation,” she said. “Instead of asking why have so many women opted to have babies without the benefit of a husband, we should be asking why have so many women have not gotten married in the first place.”

Bonner added that many women, especially blacks and other ethnic minorities, continue to retain traditional social values regarding marriage and childbearing.

Other findings in the report showed that:

* Women in their 30s had the largest increases in childbirth rates during the 1980s. For instance, women 30-34 years old experienced 76.1 births per 1,000 women, up from 60 births in 1980. For women 35-39, the rate rose to 38 births per 1,000 in 1992 from 26.9 in 1980.

* Based on their expectations for having children, women in their prime childbearing years (18-34) would give birth to an average of 2,098 children per 1,000 women in 1992, down slightly from an average of 2,160 per 1,000 women in 1976.

* The number of dual-income married couples with children has increased since 1976, while the traditional family in which the husband works while the wife remains at home with children declined from 43% in 1976 to 24% in 1992.