For unmarried minority women of all ages, birth rates fluctuated between 1975 and 1985, but have risen since 1985. Since 1960, the number of births has dropped in many industrialized countries, but the decline has been less severe in the United States. The number of births fell by 8 percent in the United States between 1960 and 1988, but it plunged by 43 percent in Portugal and 38 percent in Italy. While birth rates in many countries dropped, the number and proportion of births to unmarried women rose rapidly. This is true for the United States.
Countries vary widely in the proportion of births to unmarried women.
For example, in Greece, only 2 percent of the 1988 births were to unmarried women compared with 45 percent in Denmark. While the United States has the highest marriage rate of any of these countries it also has a high rate of births to unmarried women. However, the proportion of these pregnancies ending in abortions, which rose rapidly in the 1970s, remained stable during the mid-80's. About 41 percent of teenage pregnancies result in abortion. Moreover, about 64 percent of Hispanic families had children under 18, compared with 58 percent of black families and 47 percent of white families.