Fewer unmarried women are giving birth, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which found that there has been a 15 percent decline in unmarried women giving birth over the past 10 years, falling to 1.2 million in 2023. Almost one-third (30.9 percent) of the 4 million women ages 15 to 50 who gave birth in 2023 were unmarried. In 2011, 35.7 percent, or 1.5 million, of the 4.1 million women in that age group who gave birth were unmarried. Eight states in the South—Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia—had higher levels of recent births to unmarried women than the national average. States in the Midwest, including Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, and in the Northeast, including New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Vermont, had lower levels of recent births to unmarried women than the national average. Western states, including Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Washington, also had lower rates. In the South, Virginia was the only state to experience a shift to lower-than-national-level birth rates among unmarried women.