...The new report on births was issued Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on a review of more than 99 percent of birth certificates for the year 2008 — the first full year of the recession. Overall, about 4.2 million babies were born that year, a 2 percent drop from 2007. It's the first annual decline in births since the start of the decade.
Experts say the most likely explanations are the recession and a decline in immigration to the United States, which has been blamed on the weak job market.
Some early birth information for the first six months of 2009 indicates a continuing decline of about 3 percent in total births, CDC officials said...
