WASHINGTON, May 1 (UPI) -- Sixty-two percent of women in their early 20s who had a child within the previous year in 2011 were unmarried, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday.
The American Community Survey report found that for women between the ages of 35 and 39, only 17 percent were unmarried during that time frame.
About 4.1 million women reported in 2011 they had given birth in the last year. The analysis, based on separate survey questions, found 36 percent were unmarried at the time of the survey.
In 2005, the earliest year for which statistics were available, about 31 percent of such births were to unmarried women.
The study found that "non-marital fertility has been climbing steadily since the 1940s and has risen even more markedly in recent years," said Rose Kreider, one of the report's authors.
The proportion of recent births to unmarried women varied by income and education levels, the survey revealed.
Fifty-seven percent of women with less than a high school education in 2011 had given birth in the previous 12 months, while only 9 percent of recent mothers with a bachelor's degree or more were unmarried.
Sixty-nine percent of women in households with incomes of $10,000 a year were unmarried when they gave birth. In households with $200,000 or more in annual income, only 9 percent of new mothers were unmarried.
