We can beat that!

There is a lot of fuss about the US rate of unmarried births right now. Here is more coverage;

The National Center for Health Statistics, the statistical arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has released a report, "Births: Preliminary Data for 2005," that shows the nuclear family is in meltdown:

* Out-of-wedlock births reached 1.5 million last year, or 36.8 percent of the total.

* Among non-Hispanic blacks, the illegitimacy rate reached a staggering 69.5 percent.

* Among non-Hispanic whites, the rate is up to 25.4 percent.

* The illegitimacy rate for Hispanics increased by 1.5 percent in just one year, and now stands at 47.9 percent.

* Of these nonmarital births, 52 percent were to women without a high school diploma vs. just 9 percent to women with a graduate or professional degree.

You may be confused here by the two apparently different Hispanic illegitimacy rates. The first mentioned is the rate of illegitimate births per 1,000 unmarried females and the second is the percentage of all Hispanic births.

According to the NZ Yearbook 2004, ex-nuptial births comprised 44 percent of all births in 2003 and 75 percent of all Maori births were ex-nuptial accounting for nearly half of NZ's ex-nuptial birth rate.

The stereotypical American loves to be biggest and best at everything but I'm afraid we have outdone them in this particular contest.