USA Today: Is this the next baby boom?
A record number of babies were born in the USA in 2007, according to early federal data released Wednesday that some demographers say could signal an impending baby "boomlet."
The 4,315,000 births in 2007, reported as "provisional" data by the National Center for Health Statistics, gives just a glimpse of what's ahead in the nursery.
"I can't tell you anything about who's having these babies, but it is an early look and there is an increase," says federal demographer Stephanie Ventura. "It's a milestone."
She says details about the mothers won't be available until the fall, because all the agency has now is birth certificate data from state health departments.
The last time the number was this high was in 1957, in the middle of the baby boom years; about 78 million Americans were born from 1946 to 1964. Demographers have been monitoring gradual increases in recent years; data for 2006, which won't be made final until September, show a 3% increase over 2005. That's the largest single-year increase since 1989. …
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