Recession fertility update: unemployment story strengthens

The relationship between unemployment and fertility changes during the recession is very strong.

Using the new 2010 fertility rate data (births per 1,000 women ages 15-44) and 2009 unemployment rate by state (giving unemployment a year to work its magic), I can update my earlier post. When you line up the changes  in fertility and unemployment rates, this is what you get:

In my last post I reported this correlation as -.48, but now it is up to -.55. This correlation doesn’t prove a causal relationship. However, with the national evidence that the fertility rate has tracked the economy pretty well since the 1990s, the circumstantial evidence is strong.