Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate over 42 million babies have been born in the United States to unmarried mothers throughout the past 30 years.
CDC notes that, between the years 1987-2016, 42,015,749 babies were born to unmarried mothers, representing 34.78 percent of the total 120,777,366 babies born in that three-decade period in the U.S.
According to the data, in 2016, 1,569,796 babies were born to unmarried mothers, or 39.8 percent of total births. The data show a dip from 2015, when 40.3 percent of total births were to unmarried women.
As CNSNews.com reports, the percentage of babies born to unmarried women in the U.S. had been increasing since 1940.
In 1958, five percent of babies born were to unmarried mothers. In 1969 that statistic was ten percent, and in 1983, it hit 20 percent for the first time. The percentage of babies born to unmarried women continued to rise to 30 percent in 1992, and to 40 percent in 2008.
Between 2009-2015, the percentage remained above 40 percent, but then dipped to 39.8 percent in 2016. However, 2016 marked the 29th consecutive year that more than one million babies were born to unmarried mothers in the U.S.