Cascadia Scorecard News
August 2004

The Pacific Northwest's average family size set a regional record low, carried down by all-time lows in birthrates among teenagers and women in their early twenties. In 2002, the most recent year for which complete data are available, Cascadia's fertility fell to 1.78 lifetime births per woman. The previous low was 1.79 in 1986.

Average family size (or, more precisely, the "total fertility rate") is a sensitive indicator of educational and economic opportunities for women, especially young or poor women; growing up in poverty tends to boost women's fertility in their teenage and young adult years. Family size is also a gauge of the Northwest's contribution to the global impacts of population growth.

British Columbians have the smallest families, at 1.4 lifetime births. Idaho families average the largest at 2.3. Localities differ even more dramatically, as the table below shows. Over their lives, for example, women in Yakima County in eastern Washington, have an average of 2.7 children; women in Vancouver, BC, have an average of one. Similarly, women in suburban Canyon County, Idaho, have 1.2 more children apiece, on average, than their counterparts in Lane County, which surrounds Eugene, Oregon.

Declining total fertility rates, especially when they stem from falling birth rates among very young women, are a salutary sign for societies that aspire to gender equality. The world's leading nations for women's equality and pro-family policies-the Netherlands and Sweden-have total fertility rates around 1.7.

The Northwest can match this rate by better preventing unwanted pregnancies, as discussed here. Some 8 percent of births in the Northwest states (but fewer in British Columbia) result from pregnancies that were unwanted by the mother at the time of conception. Another 30 percent are unplanned. The prospects for life are dramatically improved for children who are born wanted, as discussed here.

In fact, a worthy population goal for the Pacific Northwest would simply be that every child be born wanted.

More information:
Sightline's population indicator
Misplaced Blame: The Real Roots of Population Growth

Families are smallest in British Columbia, largest in Idaho