Nearly one in four American infants is born to an unmarried mother, six times as many as four decades ago, federal health officials say.
Among black infants, the rate is more than six in 10, the national Centers for Disease Control reported Thursday.Infant mortality rates are higher among children born to single mothers, who often provide less financial security than some married parents, the CDC said.
Twenty-four percent of U.S. infants were born to unmarried women in 1987, the latest year for which statistics are available, the CDC said. In 1950, the figure was 4 percent.
The percentage of black infants born to unmarried mothers was 62 percent, compared with 17 percent of white infants. Both are up from 1983, when 59 percent of black births were to single mothers, compared with 13 percent of white births.
The Atlanta-based CDC said single motherhood is a signal, but not a direct cause, of possible health problems for the child.
"Marital status confers neither risk nor protection . . . ," the CDC said. "Rather, the principal benefits of marriage to infant survival are economic and social support."
U.S. infant mortality rates are higher for infants born to unmarried mothers than for children of marriage, for both whites and blacks, the CDC said, citing new analysis of 1983 statistics. For whites, the infant mortality rate was 13.1 per 1,000 children of unmarried mothers, compared to 7.8 for children of married mothers. For blacks, the non-marriage infant mortality rate was 19.6, compared to 14.6.
But when talking about children of teen mothers, the "benefits of marriage" cited by the CDC may not be there. Mortality rates for infants of married mothers under 18 tend to be even worse than for unmarried mothers under 18, probably due to a "severe lack of economic and social support."
"Married teenagers are more likely to establish independent households, thereby estranging themselves from financial and child-care support from relatives," the agency said.