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1.7 Million U.S. Women to Celebrate First Mother's Day

(April 2008) Mother's Day in the United States falls on May 11 this year, and we can reasonably expect nearly 2 million American women to receive their first Mother's Day card—at least according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. There were 1.7 million first-births to American women in 2006, and 2007 is likely to have been about the same. These first-born children represented 40 percent of the 4.3 million total births that year. Their mothers are most likely to be in their 20s: More than half (55 percent) of the first-time births were to mothers in that age group in 2006. Mothers under age 20 accounted for one-fifth of first-born children, while just over 1 percent of first births were to women age 40 or older.

New mothers are slightly older today than they were in their own mothers' time: In 2005, the average age for first mothers was 25.2 years, up from 22.7 years in 1980. Overall, new mothers account for about 2 percent of the more than 82 million mothers in the United States.

—Kelvin Pollard, Senior Demographer, Population Reference Bureau

References: Brady E. Hamilton, Joyce A. Martin, and Stephanie J. Ventura, "Births: Preliminary Data for 2006," National Vital Statistics Reports 56, no. 7 (2007): table 4, accessed online at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_07.pdf, on April 22, 2008; Joyce A. Martin et al., "Births: Final Data for 2005," National Vital Statistics Reports 56, no. 6 (2007): table 10, accessed online at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_06.pdf, on April 22, 2008; and U.S. Census Bureau, Facts for Features, "Mother's Day: May 2008," CB08-FF08, accessed online at www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/, on April 9, 2008.

Remittance Flows Total $318 Billion in 2007

(April 2008) Total remittances—transfers of money by foreign workers to their home countries—reached an estimated $318 billion worldwide in 2007, according to a recently released World Bank report. Not surprisingly, most of that money—$240 billion—went to developing countries. Indeed, recorded remittances are more than twice the level of official development assistance to poor countries, and provide the largest single source of external financing in many of them.

In terms of dollar amounts, India ($27 billion), China ($25.7 billion), and Mexico ($25 billion) were the top three recipients of migrant remittances. However, the top 10 also included several industrialized countries, such as France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom—all of which receive most of their remittances from workers in other European countries.

In general, remittances constituted the greatest share of gross domestic product (GDP) in countries with smaller economies. In Tajikistan, Moldova, and Tonga, for example, remittances accounted for more than 30 percent of total GDP.

With outward remittance flows of $42.2 billion in 2006, the United States remained the largest source country for remittances, followed by Saudi Arabia ($15.6 billion), Switzerland ($13.8 billion), and Germany ($12.3 billion).

—Kelvin Pollard, Senior Demographer, Population Reference Bureau

Reference: Dilip Ratha and Zhimei Xu, Migration and Remittances Factbook 2008 (Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank, 2008), data accessed online at www.worldbank.org/prospects/migrationandremittances, on April 23, 2008. 

Sex Before Age 16 Linked With Higher Risk for Sexually Transmitted Diseases

(April 2008) A recent article in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health examines the risks involved in sexual relationships between teenagers and older partners. Researchers from Child Trends, in Washington, D.C., noted that 10 percent of middle and high school age girls—as well as 2 percent of boys of the same age—had experienced intercourse before their 16th birthday with a partner at least three years their senior.

While the researchers found some evidence that teen sex with an older partner did increase the risk of teenage or nonmarital births among girls, they discovered it put girls (and boys) at an even greater risk of getting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Girls who had early sex with an older partner were more than twice as likely to get a sexually transmitted disease (STD) as either girls who had adolescent sex with partners their own age or girls who had delayed intercourse until age 16 or later. This was true even when various individual, family, and relationship history characteristics were taken into account. Among boys, the risk of contracting an STD was nearly twice as great for those who had sex before age 16 (regardless of the age of their partner) than for those who had waited, although the risk lessened when accounting for the history of their relationships. 

—Kelvin Pollard, Senior Demographer, Population Reference Bureau

Reference: Suzanne Ryan, et. al., "Older Sexual Partners During Adolescence: Links to Reproductive Health Outcomes in Young Adulthood," Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 40, no. 1 (2008): 17-26, accessed online at www.blackwell-synergy.com, on April 22, 2008.