White women more likely to be childless, Census says

By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
Updated 2h 7m ago

White women are more likely to be childless than other racial or ethnic groups, according to new data from the U.S. Census.

Findings from the 2010 Current Population Survey also show that black women were more likely to be childless than Hispanic women; percentages for Asian women more closely resemble those for blacks and Hispanics than whites.

The Census uses age 44 as the age for completion of childbearing. The data show 20.6% of white women were childless, compared to 17.2% of black women ; 15.9% of Asian women; and 12.4% of Hispanic women.

"One of the things that goes hand-in-hand with childlessness is high levels of education," says D'Vera Cohn of Pew Research Center, who co-authored a report on childlessness last year. "White women are more likely to be college-educated. That could be one key reason for the numbers you're seeing."

Even more marked differences in childlessness by race and ethnicity are reflected among women who have never married. Among unmarried women by age 44, white and Asian women were much more likely to be childless than unmarried black or Hispanic women. Of unmarried white women, 69.5% were childless; 65.8% of Asian women were childless. But among unmarried Hispanic women, 36.4% were childless, and just 27.8% of unmarried black women were childless.

"Childbearing and marital status are more tightly connected for white women," says Census demographer Kristy Krivickas.

Fertility researcher Karen Guzzo, an assistant professor of sociology at Kutztown (Pa.) University, says many women "are probably not choosing never to have children, so much as … they're not forming relationships because they're investing in their education and careers."

Census also compared data from 2010 and 2000 to get a national perspective on changes in the lifetime fertility experience of women.

Among other findings:

•Women with a college degree are experiencing what Census refers to as a "delayer boom" — they're having babies at later ages than other women and having fewer children overall.

•More than half (55%) of women who had a child in the past year were in the labor force. Of these employed women, 34% were working full time and 14% were working part time; 7% were unemployed.

•Almost one-quarter (23%) of women who gave birth in the past year reported living in households with family incomes of at least $75,000; 21% of those with a birth in the past year reported living in households with incomes under $20,000, the lowest range.

•By age 44, foreign-born women were more likely to have ever had a baby (87%) than were native-born women (80%).

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