No money, no honey

Atlanta: The economy may well be the best form of birth control.

US births dropped for the third straight year — especially for young mothers — and experts think money worries are the reason. A federal report released on Thursday showed declines in the birth rate for all races and most age groups. Teens and women in their early 20s had the most dramatic dip, to the lowest rates since record-keeping began in the 1940s. Also, the rate of Caesarean sections stopped going up for the first time since 1996.

Experts suspected the economy drove down birth rates in 2008 and 2009 as women put off having children. With the 2010 figures, suspicion has turned into certainty. "I don't think there's any doubt now that it was the recession. It could not be anything else," said Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, DC-based research organisation. He was not involved in the new report.

US births hit an all-time high in 2007, at more than 4.3 million. Over the next two years, the number dropped to about 4.2 million and then about 4.1 million. Last year, it was down to just over 4 million, according to the new report from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.