MILLENNIAL WOMEN SLOWEST GENERATION TO HAVE BABIES IN U.S. HISTORY

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Millennial women aren’t looking forward to being called mommy any time soon. According to a new study, millennial women are having babies at the slowest rate of any generation in U.S. history. The study from the Urban Institute found it’s not because this generation is putting their careers first but rather for economic reasons.

Between 2007 and 2012, birth rates among American women in their 20s dropped by 15 percent. Financial challenges drive “young women who aren’t worried about the biological clock to say, ‘Things are tough right now. Let me put this off because I can,’” co-author Nan Astone, senior fellow at the Urban Institute tells The Washington Post.

By 2012, millennials reproduced at a pace that would lead to 948 births per 1,000 women—“by far the slowest pace of any generation,” the report said.

And surprisingly the decrease was across all races. Hispanics saw the largest drop; from 2007 to 2012, the rate dropped 26 percent (1,570 to 1,158).  For African-American women the rate declined 14 percent  (1,216 to 1,046) while white women experienced a 11 percent rate decrease (976 to 866).

With many millennial women finding it hard to land jobs and are still living  their parents, motherhood doesn’t seem like a desirable option.

And a lot of millennials are still single, again for economic reasons. Marriage rates have dropped also in all racial groups. More than a quarter of never-married Americans, aged 25 to 34, have not gotten married because they’re not “financially prepared,” a recent Pew survey found.