Baby births down in Arizona this year

Published/Last Modified on Saturday, Nov 29, 2008 - 05:20:28 am MST

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PHOENIX (AP) — Baby births are down in Arizona this year and experts say the numbers could drop further as a growing economic crisis dampens couples’ desire for starting a family.

According to figures from the Arizona Department of Health, the state is on pace to record a 3 percent decline compared with 2007’s record 102,687 births.

In Maricopa County, births are down 4 percent, although the region’s birth rate remains one of the nation’s highest.

Overall in Arizona, 74,376 babies were born January through September, down from 76,621 in the same period last year.

Maricopa County had 46,998 babies born during the same period, compared with 49,182 last year.

Experts say a slight slowdown in regional population growth and stepped-up enforcement of illegal-immigration laws that may have caused a drop in the pool of childbearing-age women.

Generally, births go up in good times and down in bad.

“It’s just about every cycle where there is any kind of significant downturn where you’d see this,” said Tom Rex, associate director of the Center for Competitiveness and Prosperity Research at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business.

It’s anyone’s guess if the trend will continue, according to statisticians with the DHS and the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks birth trends.

Doctors at three hospitals in the Phoenix metropolitan area believe the trend will stick around as long as economic turmoil continues.

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ditto wrote on Dec 1, 2008 12:25 PM:

" if i didn't know better, i would have thought I wrote this myself. We need to stop giving breeders tax breaks. A guy I met had 7 kids and bragged that he didn't pay any taxes. every one of his kids raised my taxes with no payback except the degradation of the planet and overcrowding.
tax the breeders! "

And this is a bad thing wrote on Nov 30, 2008 5:29 PM:

" There are over 6 billion people on this planet, poverty and unemployment is sky high and natural resources are being depleted at an alarming level and people somehow falling birthrates is a tragedy? People should be encouraged to have fewer or no kids and those who breed like rabbits should be fined and scorned for being thoughtless breeders. "