Why Birthrates Among Hispanic Americans Have Plummeted

Young American-born Hispanic women are less likely to be poor and more likely to be educated than their immigrant mothers and grandmothers, according to the Pew Research Center, and many are delaying childbearing to finish school and start careers, just like other American-born women.“Hispanics are in essence catching up to their peers,” said Lina Guzman, a demographer at Child Trends, a nonprofit research group.The Hispanic decline is helping to drive a major shift in the country’s fertility patterns. That is significant for the nation’s fertility patterns because of the sheer size of the Mexican origin population, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of all Hispanics and around 11 percent of the American population, according to the Pew Research Center.Ms. Wences’ parents, who came to the United States permanently in the mid-1990s, met on a tobacco farm and settled in a rural patch of Wake County, which contains Raleigh and its suburbs. One of the happiest moments of his life was when Yoselin called him from her car in the parking lot of Wake Technical Community College, where she was studying for an associate degree, to tell him that N.C. State had accepted her transfer application.Ms. Wences said that if she got pregnant now, she would probably have to drop out of college.“I’d feel embarrassed that the sacrifices that my dad made up to this point would be going down the drain,” she said.Between 2007 and 2017, the population of Hispanic women of childbearing age in Wake County grew nearly 50 percent, drawn by a booming local economy. Many of those women had been raised by siblings in Mexico as their parents worked.“I have a very supportive circle,” Ms. Wences said, adding that if she wanted to go through with having a baby, her boyfriend’s parents would probably help.