More than 40% of U.S. children born in 2020 had single mothers, according to new government data, a 10-fold increase over the past eight decades.
SO WHAT
Research shows kids from single-parent families have it rough and are likelier to turn to crime.
WHAT THE NUMBERS SHOW
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Births: Final Data for 2020” report, released last week, documented a sharp rise in the number of U.S. births to unwed mothers since 1940, when the CDC began keeping track.
In that year, only 3.8 percent of American babies were born to unmarried mothers.
- Of the 3.61 million births registered in the United States in 2020, 1.46 million were to unmarried mothers.
- “The percentage of all births to unmarried women peaked in 2009 at 41.0 percent,” the CDC reported.
- The number of babies born to unwed mothers in 2020 went up slightly, 1%, from the previous year.
Meanwhile, 42% of births in the U.S. were covered by Medicaid.
WHY IT MATTERS
A raft of studies have linked growing up in single-parent households to adverse outcomes, including higher rates of abuse, behavioral problems, crime and incarceration.
- “Children from single-parent families are more likely to have behavioral problems because they tend to lack economic security and adequate time with parents,” wrote policy analyst Robert Maginnis in 1997.
- A 2004 study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency cited 1995 National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health to conclude that “adolescents in single-parent families are significantly more delinquent than their counterparts residing with two biological, married parents.”
- An analysis by Heritage foundation researchers in 1995 found “a 10 percent increase in the percentage of children living in single-parent homes leads typically to a 17 percent increase in juvenile crime.”