Temporal Trends in the Rates of Singletons, Twins and Higher-order Multiple Births Over Five Decades Across Racial Groups in the United States

Authors

  • Liye Wang, BS Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA
  • Deepa Dongarwar, MS Center of Excellence in Health Equity, Training and Research, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA
  • Hamisu M. Salihu, MD, PhD Center of Excellence in Health Equity, Training and Research, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA; Department of Family and Community Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21106/ijma.377

Keywords:

Trends in Multiple Gestations, US , Black , White , Singletons , Twins , Higher-order multiples

Abstract

We analysed Natality data obtained from the National Vital Statistics System from 1971 through 2018. Overall, the rates of singletons declined among all racial groups over the five decades of the study. However, the rates of twins and higher-order multiples increased over the same period although for the past two decades, the rates of higher-order multiples had substantially plummeted. The global health implication of these findings is that policy changes in the US in the form of professional practice guidelines have succeeded in reducing the birth of vulnerable populations (i.e., higher-order multiples) who are predominantly created using assisted reproductive technology.

 

Copyright © 2020 Wang et al. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0.

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Publication History

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 3

Section

Short Research Communication

License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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