Rate fell 41 percent between 1998 and 2014; decline highest among white women
THURSDAY, April 28, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Since 1998, births of three or more babies at once have fallen by more than 40 percent in the United States, according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) published in the April issue of the NCHS Data Brief.
Joyce Martin, of the NCHS, and colleagues examined birth statistics in 46 states and Washington, D.C., from 1998 to 2014.
The researchers found that the rate of births of triplets, quadruplets, or more babies fell 41 percent — from 7,625 in 1998, when such births peaked, to 4,526 in 2014, reaching a rate of one in every 880 births. In seven states — Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Rhode Island — the rate of these births fell by at least half, the study findings showed. The declines in births of three or more babies at once were highest among white women. Rates were lower for Hispanics and unchanged for blacks.
According to the new report, 7 percent of triplets, quadruplets, and higher multiple-births born in 2013 didn’t live past one year, compared with one in 200 singletons (less than 1 percent).
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