January 9, 2012
The U.S. under-18 population fell between 2010 and 2011, for the first time in at least two decades, the Wall Street Journal reports. In July 2011, the under-18 population was 73,934,272, down 247,000 or 0.3 percent from July 2010. According to an analysis of Census data by demographer William H. Frey of The Brookings Institution, fewer children are being born and "it doesn't look like a youth boom will reverberate any time soon." States with the biggest drop in children tended to be concentrated in the Rust Belt and New England; every New England state's under-18 population fell at least 1 percent from April 2010 to July 11.