In the last post I looked at births (find it here). I ended by pointing out the population of women could be different due to the underlying oil boom North Dakota experienced at that time. So there are a few ways we might see some changes. We might see some changes for a given year within a certain age category. The next graph plots this out for us to see.

There is some change in shape age specific fertility rate from year to year, however the shape remains largely the same. Clearly there is a bit of an increase and then decrease over time, much like we saw in some of the other charts from the other post. A better representation is to look at the age categories over time like in this next plot.

When we take a look it is interesting to see the 25-29 fertility rate actually declined overall, even when the births were really increasing. There is a slight increase in the 35-39 age group fertility rate and a more sizable increase in the 30-34 age category fertility rate.

The fertility rates indicate some changes in the underlying populations of women going on over this time. The changes in women in this child bearing age categories is important to understand, as is the change in men at this time as well. Questions exist about how permanent some of these underlying changes were, and how likely/quickly they reversed with oil industry changes. Clearly there were not complete reversals, but there were some declines.

Data: United States Department of Health and Human Services (US DHHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Division of Vital Statistics, Natality public-use data 2007-2020, on CDC WONDER Online Database, October 2021