AP Thinks It's Bad News That Americans Are Having More Children

The birth rate in America is up, but that's bad news to the AP:

ATLANTA (AP) - Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations, the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boomlet, reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years.

The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were having more babies, too.

An Associated Press review of birth numbers dating to 1909 found the total number of U.S. births was the highest since 1961, near the end of the baby boom. An examination of global data also shows that the United States has a higher fertility rate than every country in continental Europe, as well as Australia, Canada and Japan. Fertility levels in those countries have been lower than the U.S. rate for several years, although some are on the rise, most notably in France.

Experts believe there is a mix of reasons: a decline in contraceptive use, a drop in access to abortion, poor education and poverty.

Apparently the school systems aren't converting enough kids to homosexuality, either.

It takes several paragraphs for the AP to finally acknowledge that perhaps one of the reasons for the higher birth rate is the fact that Americans like kids and can afford to have more if they want to.

"Americans like children. We are the only people who respond to prosperity by saying, `Let's have another kid,'" said Nan Marie Astone, associate professor of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University.

The article mentions that one reason for the higher birth rate could be illegals coming to this country to have kids and gain automatic American citizenship for little Pedro or Maria. That's probably true, and if the Constitution is ever changed to remove automatic citizenship, we'll likely see a drop in the birth numbers.

All that being what it is, it's still silly for the AP to assume that higher birth rates are the result of negative factors.