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The birth rate among women 30 and older increased during the past 20 years to about 96 for every 1,000 women in 2005, the year examined in the study published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics. Among women ages 15 to 19, births fell 2 percent to about 40 for every 1,000, the study said.
Women are ``pursuing career and education first and postponing marriage and family,'' said Brady Hamilton, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ``For teens, it reflects a combination of things: programs that promote abstinence, as well as the programs that promote responsible sexual behavior.''
The decline in births among teenagers was especially steep for non-Hispanic black women ages 15 to 17, the study said. The birth rate for that group fell 6 percent in 2005 from the previous year and has dropped 59 percent since 1991.
Caesarean deliveries rose among all age groups to a record rate of more than 30 percent of births, the study said. The number of women having Caesarean sections, which fell in the early 1990s, has increased 46 percent since 1996.
Births to unmarried women rose 3 percent to a record 48 for every 1,000 women in 2005, compared with the previous year.
The study used U.S. birth and death certificate information from the Centers for Disease Control. The U.S. had about 4.1 million births in 2005.
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