TRENDS IN AMERICAN FAMILY-SIZE DIVERSITY

How diverse is American society and are Americans becoming more or les s diverse? Contemporary discussions claim high and increasing diversit y, but analyze few actual trends. This paper examines completed family size diversity from 1940 to 2000 by race and across US states. For al l groups, regions and the USA as a whole, family size diversity decrea sed significantly, produced by a combination of fewer small and large families and a general decline in regionally-based differences. Both w ithin and across states the diversity declined in two stages, but regi onal clusters of states followed different paths. A cluster of Souther n Mountain states showed the greatest contrast. Between the 1940s and the early 1970s, a slight baby boom rise in diversity among homogeneou s states, was counterbalanced by declining diversity in more diverse s tates. Black women in all states and white women in Mainstream and Oth er states showed similar trends during the baby boom years, while whit e women in the Southern Mountain states failed to show a baby boom inc rease in large families. For childbearing completed since 1975, region al patterns disappeared and both the range and level of diversity decl ined further. A national and essentially homogeneous culture of childb earing, initiated during the baby boom years and now facilitated by bi rth control and abortion, has settled in at below-replacement levels. While the possibility always exists that childbearing pattern might ch ange, there is no current evidence to suggest movement away from this low and homogeneous fertility.