{"id":185,"date":"2008-08-22T14:44:13","date_gmt":"2008-08-22T18:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/?p=185"},"modified":"2017-12-07T15:26:36","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T20:26:36","slug":"nh-has-lowest-birthrate-in-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/2008\/08\/22\/nh-has-lowest-birthrate-in-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"N.H. has lowest birthrate in nation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>August 22, 2008<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/local\/articles\/2008\/08\/22\/nh_has_lowest_birthrate_in_nation\/\">Boston Globe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON &#8211; The stork apparently has trouble landing in New England.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New Hampshire has the lowest,<\/strong> Vermont the second-lowest, Rhode Island the third-lowest, Massachusetts the seventh-lowest, and Maine the eighth-lowest birth rates in the country.<\/p>\n<p>A new US Census Bureau report says that in 2006, New Hampshire&#8217;s birthrate was 42 babies per 1,000 women of childbearing age. The national rate was 54.9 births per thousand.<\/p>\n<p>Vermont had a rate of 42.2; Rhode Island&#8217;s was 45; Massachusetts&#8217; was 46.1; and Maine&#8217;s was 47.3.<\/p>\n<p>In Vermont, officials say the low rate could accelerate a demographic shift that threatens to shrink the state&#8217;s workforce.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everybody has interpreted the shrinking population of working-age people as a mass exodus by young people out of Vermont, but that&#8217;s really a very small part of the story,&#8221; Art Woolf, a University of Vermont economist, told The Times Argus. &#8220;The biggest part of the story is that people just aren&#8217;t being born.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kevin Dorn, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said the shortage of working-age Vermonters is a major economic hurdle facing the state. In the past year, Vermont&#8217;s workforce fell by about 2,000.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This low birthrate is a component of a much bigger problem,&#8221; Dorn said.<\/p>\n<p>The median age of Vermont&#8217;s workforce is 42.3, the highest in the nation.<\/p>\n<p>And the Vermont Department of Labor estimates that the workforce will shrink in the next two decades as wage-earners reach retirement age.<\/p>\n<p>Governor James Douglas said efforts to bolster the workforce by drawing young professionals back to the state is crucial to economic development.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Employers cite adequacy of the workforce as one major concern for future success here,&#8221; Douglas told the newspaper. &#8220;We have employers who have created good jobs and want to create more, but they need a qualified workforce to take those jobs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Recognizing a similar potential workforce problem in New Hampshire, the state university system and business leaders are working together to try to encourage college graduates to stay in the state. They&#8217;d like to increase the retention rate from 50 percent to 55 percent. Thus the group&#8217;s name: The 55 Percent Initiative.<\/p>\n<p>In a survey, in-state and out-of-state students said New Hampshire has a high quality of life, is a good place to raise a family, has available housing, and is close to natural resources.<\/p>\n<p>But 40 percent of graduates said they believe there are few or no jobs in their field in New Hampshire.<\/p>\n<p>###<br \/>\nInquiring minds want to know: if this is true, why do spenders keep on wanting to build huge expensive schools for the declining student enrollment?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>August 22, 2008 Boston Globe WASHINGTON &#8211; The stork apparently has trouble landing in New England. New Hampshire has the lowest, Vermont the second-lowest, Rhode Island the third-lowest, Massachusetts the seventh-lowest, and Maine the eighth-lowest birth rates in the country. A new US Census Bureau report says that in 2006, New Hampshire&#8217;s birthrate was 42 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-nh","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5735,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/5735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cnht.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}