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Axios
4 days ago
- Health
- Axios
121 million live in states restricting contraceptive access
State laws regulating birth control remain a patchwork, with wide variations in access and restrictions in some locales requiring parental consent or allowing providers to opt out of dispensing contraception, a new scorecard from the Population Reference Bureau shows. Why it matters: Contraception access has become a political flashpoint since the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade, with Democrats unsuccessfully pressing to codify nationwide contraceptive access and some patients concerned that conservative state legislatures could enact new curbs. What they found: States on both coasts generally had policies aimed at ensuring access, such as requiring insurers to offer no-cost coverage and allowing nurse practitioners or pharmacists to prescribe birth control. Nearly 35% of Americans, or 121 million people, currently live in a state that actively restricts access. Of the 16 states the group identified in that cohort, the most restrictive including Kansas, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama and Wyoming. The most protective included California, Washington, Connecticut, New York, New Mexico, Maryland and Oregon. Another 18 states were considered a mix between the two. "Reproductive health care access depends on where you live," said Cathryn Streifel, senior program director at PRB and co-author of the scorecard.
NBC News
4 days ago
- Health
- NBC News
Birth control access: Scorecard evaluates family planning policies across the U.S.
There are 'two different Americas' when it comes to birth control, family planning experts say. A new report finds that only a third of states protect access to affordable contraception through their policies, such as Medicaid expansion or requiring health insurers to pay for prescriptions for months at a time. The report, released Wednesday, analyzed current birth control policies across the 50 states and Washington, D.C. It comes as finding affordable birth control becomes more difficult for many women across the country and as conservative state and federal lawmakers look to limit access to some forms of contraception. The report — a state-by-state contraceptive policy scorecard — shows how important local legislation is to family planning and health care. 'Seeing the full picture across all 50 states and D.C. really solidified how uneven access is,' said Christine Power, a senior policy adviser for the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit that analyzes population data from around the world and published the report. The report found that state-level policies typically fall into three categories of access: Affordability. The scorecard tracked whether states have expanded Medicaid or enacted policies that require insurers to fully cover contraception. Medicaid is the main source of funding for family planning services for low-income people, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group. Previous research has indicated that in states that expanded access to Medicaid, the number of prescriptions for birth control increased. Availability. The researchers looked into whether states allow qualified health care workers who are not doctors, such as pharmacists, to provide birth control and whether they've expanded access to emergency contraception, as well as requiring health insurers to cover longer supplies of contraceptives for several months or up to a year. Health care environment. The scorecard measured whether public schools in the state teach medically accurate, comprehensive sex education and whether parents can opt-out of the classes for their children. Restrictions to birth control include whether minors are able to get birth control without parental permission and whether doctors or pharmacists are allowed to refuse birth control prescriptions based on personal beliefs. 'Affordability policies had the biggest weight on access, that was bigger than the access policies,' Power said. Power said she was surprised by how many states scored poorly, not necessarily because they're highly restrictive toward family planning care, but because they 'simply haven't acted at all.' Power and her team evaluated how state-level policies altered access in each state, both on their own and when they were layered with others. They found that 16 states and Washington, D.C. made birth control easily accessible and affordable. Sixteen restricted access and 18 fell in the middle. All 16 protective states had one thing in common: they had adopted Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act, which has allowed states to extend Medicaid coverage to more adults with low incomes. None of the 16 restrictive states — including Alabama, Florida, Kansas, Mississippi and Wyoming, which ranked the highest — expanded Medicaid. States with the most favorable environment for birth control are California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington. The 18 states that fell in the middle category spanned the political spectrum, from reliably red states like West Virginia to liberal strongholds like Massachusetts. 'Your state-level context really does matter a lot for what your access to contraception looks like. That is especially true for vulnerable people, for people who are on state or public health insurance and for minors who don't have as much say in their health care,' said Leslie Root, an associate director of the CU Population Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, who was not involved with the report. Root said the report offers a good synthesis of the layers of legal barriers that play into whether or not a person can get birth control. It can range from what students are taught about contraception in school, to whether they can get a 12-month supply of birth control or whether they can get the type of birth control that works best for them.
New York Post
07-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
What will happen to the housing market during a ‘baby dust'?
Advertisement The American dream was built around a timeline: Get married, buy a home, start a family. But that timeline is breaking down. Today, Americans are waiting longer or opting out entirely: Fewer marriages, fewer babies, delayed moves. And behind it all, a housing market that increasingly seems like it was built for a different time. That's why some experts are warning that the next big stress test for housing might not be affordability—but fertility. Politicians and pundits have begun sounding the alarm about America's declining birth rate, framing it as an existential threat to the economy, social safety nets, and the future of the country itself. To fix it, they're calling on young Americans to start families and invoking a familiar, almost mythic era as the model: the baby boom. Advertisement But the baby boom wasn't just a spike in births; it was also a blueprint for how Americans lived. Young couples married early, bought homes young, and raised families in newly built suburbs. It's the version of adulthood the housing market was built around, and it's a version that fewer Americans are living today. 3 Young Americans are being called to start families and invoking a familiar, almost mythic era as the model: the baby boom. Hernan Schmidt – So, what happens to a housing market built for growth when growth slows down? The baby boom blueprint that shaped U.S. housing Advertisement When Americans talk about ideal housing patterns, they're often referencing a very specific moment in history: the post-World War II baby boom. During that period, household formation surged alongside population growth, giving rise to a generation of young families, newly built homes, and widespread homeownership. It was the birth of the starter home as we know it—a modest, affordable house for a growing family. 'GI Joe and Rosie the Riveter got together right after World War II, got married, and births exploded,' explains James Hughes, a population and housing expert at Rutgers University. 'So we had rapid household formation.' That boom in household creation was closely tied to rapid housing production and policy support. 'You had the GI Bill, basically making over 4 million low-cost mortgages available to returning service members that really fueled homeownership,' explains Diana Elliott, senior vice president of programs at Population Reference Bureau, an organization that studies population. Advertisement Together, these forces created a blueprint that would shape American housing expectations for generations: Finish school, get married, buy a home, start a family—all before age 30. By 1984, this pattern was still holding, with 78% of 30-year-olds at the time married, according to data from John Burns Research & Consulting. But over the past few decades, each successive generation has followed a different, slower path. Delayed milestones, delayed demand 'The ordering in which [household formation and childbearing] happens is not as linear as it maybe was following World War II,' explains Elliott. Some of that comes down to economic and structural barriers. 'There's more of that startup time to become an adult that wasn't the case 50, 75 years ago,' she adds, pointing to rising education levels and changing job expectations. But part of it is also about choice. 'Preferences are really important here,' she notes. 'Some people increasingly have the ability to say that they don't want families … which wasn't necessarily how people felt post-World War II.' The ripple effect extends beyond the personal. As Americans put off starting families, the national fertility rate has dropped far below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. While that has inspired a national conversation about how to foster another baby boom, the likelihood of a second boom is 'very, very low,' Elliott says. 'Other countries have tried to enact really explicit policies to change this. … It hasn't worked.' Advertisement 3 During the baby boom, household formation surged alongside population growth, giving rise to a generation of young families, newly built homes, and widespread homeownership. Monkey Business – Yet the nostalgia for another baby boom persists—mirroring the postwar optimism that helped fuel the rise of suburban homeownership. And for those holding out hope that millennials will 'catch up,' the demographic math gets more complicated with time. 'What we have a lot of today: double income, no kids. … They're certainly delaying it if they're going to have children,' says Hughes. 'But some are questioning whether they are ever going to have children.' So what happens when an entire generation delays family formation long enough that the replacement rate slips out of reach—and with it, the demand that's propped up the housing market for decades? The future buyer: Older, fewer, different needs Advertisement When life milestones are delayed, so is household formation, and that ripple effect can reshape the entire housing market. One of the clearest signs of this shift is in who's renting. Right now, 72% of U.S. renters are aged 30 or older—an all-time high, according to John Burns Research & Consulting. It reflects a shift in typical homebuying age and, by extension, a significant change in the timing of household formation. The reasons for this delay are both structural and economic. Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! Advertisement 'Expensive housing makes it very, very difficult, particularly for single people, to leave their parents' house and rent an apartment,' says Hughes, the population and housing expert at Rutgers. Facing high housing costs and limited inventory, young adults are staying home longer, waiting longer to rent, and pushing off buying altogether. But the consequences don't stop there. When people delay forming independent households, other milestones—like having children—often get delayed, too. And those individual decisions can have long-term implications. 'The fewer children that are being born today means fewer people in 25 years who will be purchasing homes and starting their own households,' says Elliott. It's a compounding cycle: Delayed households today could mean fewer buyers and less demand tomorrow. What happens when household growth slows? Advertisement While America's youth population has already peaked and is projected to decline by 2.4 million over the next decade, housing experts still expect to see steady demand in the near term. But the long-term picture looks very different. Net household growth has slowed for the second year in a row, according to research from Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. In 2024, the U.S. added just 1.56 million households, down from 1.61 million in 2023. As of early 2025, that number has slowed even further to an annualized pace of 1.26 million. That's a steep drop from the 1.93 million annual average seen between 2019 and 2022. This slowdown is unfolding at a moment of rising uncertainty across all major drivers of household formation: employment rates, income growth, immigration, and demographics. Perhaps most critically, the immigration surge that helped sustain population growth in recent years came to an end in early 2025. And the demographic headwinds are only intensifying. Beginning this year, the baby boomer generation will begin turning 80, ushering in a period where rising mortality rates might begin to overshadow the formation of new households. Without a surge in immigration, Elliott estimates we could begin to see more births than deaths in the U.S. as early as 2029. Hughes agrees: 'If there is no immigration, eventually the population and number of households are going to contract.' One thing is certain: The fastest-growing housing segment will be older adults. That raises major questions about whether today's housing supply and the homes we're building will match what tomorrow's population will need. And these shifts aren't playing out uniformly. 'You also have regional differentials,' says Hughes. 'The Northeast and the Midwest regions are the demographic laggards [compared with] the South and the West … who have been the recipients of migration.' 3 While America's youth population has already peaked and is projected to decline by 2.4 million over the next decade, housing experts still expect to see steady demand in the near term. But the long-term picture looks very different. Spiroview Inc. – Can builders keep up with the shift? With later household formation, shrinking family sizes, and slowing population growth, housing demand is evolving—and builders, developers, and policymakers will need to evolve with it. 'Housing, I think, in terms of facing contraction, is still pretty far off,' says Hughes. But while demand might hold, it will likely be for a different kind of housing entirely. Buyers aren't vanishing—they're showing up later, older, and with different needs. The challenge, then, isn't just to build more homes; it's to build the right homes for a slower-growth, later-blooming America. That could mean designing smaller homes in emerging metros or prioritizing flexibility for multigenerational households—trends that we're already seeing crop up across the country. It could also mean finally preparing for the wave of older homeowners who will dominate household growth in the coming decades. 'We might need to think about what housing for older people in the future looks like,' Elliott adds—especially as millennials age into retirement with different expectations than their parents. The sooner we accept that the old model isn't coming back, the sooner we can design a new one that fits where America is headed. What does it look like to build homes for buyers who arrive later, need less space, and want more flexibility? What happens to markets where household growth slows or reverses? And how can we ensure that the next generation o
Washington Post
23-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
DOGE targets Census Bureau, worrying data users about health of US data infrastructure
The group run by Elon Musk and his aides to cut federal spending in the second Trump administration is targeting some surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau it claims are 'wasteful,' worrying users of federal data already concerned about the health of the nation's statistical infrastructure. The Department of Government Efficiency said on social media this week that five surveys costing $16.5 million that are conducted by the statistical agency for other federal agencies have been 'terminated' but didn't specify which ones. Some of the questions on the eliminated surveys asked about alcohol consumption and the frequency that respondents used the internet in their home, according to the post. Other surveys are being reviewed 'one-by-one,' said Tuesday's post on DOGE's X account. The Census Bureau didn't respond this week to an inquiry seeking comment. Based on the post, it's highly possible that the eliminated surveys included the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, which gathered information on inmates for the Department of Justice, and the Ask U.S. Panel, an internet survey conducted with the Department of Defense, said Beth Jarosz, a senior program director at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan research organization. There is a public process for changing government surveys that involves giving notice and seeking public comment, and anything that is canceled without going through that process may be violating the law, Jarosz said. 'These data belong to the public,' Jarosz said. 'The taxpayers paid for the data and they should get the data unless they don't want it to be collected anymore.' The Census Bureau asks the public survey questions in order to help Congress and federal agencies implement laws or develop policies, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues. 'Just picking isolated questions doesn't make any point DOGE has intended to make, which is, I guess, that the Census Bureau isn't doing serious work or necessary work, which they are,' Lowenthal said. 'I think that tweet suggests the DOGE staff has very little knowledge about data collection and the set purpose of the Census Bureau's mission.' The bigger concern is whether the Census Bureau is going to be ready for test run-throughs next year of the once-a-decade census, given federal government hiring freezes by the Trump administration and public silence from the bureau about the schedule, Lowenthal said. Tests next year for the 2030 census are slated for six places : western Texas; tribal lands in Arizona; Colorado Springs, Colorado; western North Carolina; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and Huntsville, Alabama. The census is used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets and helps guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual federal funding. 'The time lost in planning for a census can't be made up easily, if at all,' Lowenthal said. 'The timeline of a census is very tight. Each step builds upon what has been done previously.' Researchers and users of federal data are grappling with broader concerns about the health of the U.S. statistical system, given disruptions to federal agencies by DOGE that have led to canceled contracts and the departures of longtime staffers with vast institutional knowledge, Georgetown professor Amy O'Hara, president of the Association of Public Data Users, said during a recent online forum. For instance, the Census Bureau's roster of top leaders and their staff showed 18 vacancies as of the beginning of the month. The statistical agency's leader, Ron Jarmin, has been filling the job in an 'acting' capacity since Census Bureau director Rob Santos resigned earlier this year. An Inspector General's report last March warned that the bureau has had difficulties hiring and retaining workers to carry out its surveys. Earlier this year, the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, eliminated advisory committees made up of demographers, statisticians and advocacy group leaders who provided expertise to the statistical agency. 'There's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of frustration because information is potentially threatened due to changes in agencies or changes in programs,' O'Hara said. 'There's just this fear that what you had relied on is not going to be available.' ___ Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky at @ .
The Independent
23-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
DOGE targets Census Bureau, worrying data users about health of US data infrastructure
The group run by Elon Musk and his aides to cut federal spending in the second Trump administration is targeting some surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau it claims are 'wasteful," worrying users of federal data already concerned about the health of the nation's statistical infrastructure. The Department of Government Efficiency said on social media this week that five surveys costing $16.5 million that are conducted by the statistical agency for other federal agencies have been 'terminated' but didn't specify which ones. Some of the questions on the eliminated surveys asked about alcohol consumption and the frequency that respondents used the internet in their home, according to the post. Other surveys are being reviewed 'one-by-one,' said Tuesday's post on DOGE 's X account. The Census Bureau didn't respond this week to an inquiry seeking comment. Based on the post, it's highly possible that the eliminated surveys included the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, which gathered information on inmates for the Department of Justice, and the Ask U.S. Panel, an internet survey conducted with the Department of Defense, said Beth Jarosz, a senior program director at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan research organization. There is a public process for changing government surveys that involves giving notice and seeking public comment, and anything that is canceled without going through that process may be violating the law, Jarosz said. 'These data belong to the public,' Jarosz said. 'The taxpayers paid for the data and they should get the data unless they don't want it to be collected anymore.' The Census Bureau asks the public survey questions in order to help Congress and federal agencies implement laws or develop policies, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues. 'Just picking isolated questions doesn't make any point DOGE has intended to make, which is, I guess, that the Census Bureau isn't doing serious work or necessary work, which they are,' Lowenthal said. 'I think that tweet suggests the DOGE staff has very little knowledge about data collection and the set purpose of the Census Bureau's mission.' The bigger concern is whether the Census Bureau is going to be ready for test run-throughs next year of the once-a-decade census, given federal government hiring freezes by the Trump administration and public silence from the bureau about the schedule, Lowenthal said. Tests next year for the 2030 census are slated for six places: western Texas; tribal lands in Arizona; Colorado Springs, Colorado; western North Carolina; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and Huntsville, Alabama. The census is used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets and helps guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual federal funding. 'The time lost in planning for a census can't be made up easily, if at all,' Lowenthal said. 'The timeline of a census is very tight. Each step builds upon what has been done previously.' Researchers and users of federal data are grappling with broader concerns about the health of the U.S. statistical system, given disruptions to federal agencies by DOGE that have led to canceled contracts and the departures of longtime staffers with vast institutional knowledge, Georgetown professor Amy O'Hara, president of the Association of Public Data Users, said during a recent online forum. For instance, the Census Bureau's roster of top leaders and their staff showed 18 vacancies as of the beginning of the month. The statistical agency's leader, Ron Jarmin, has been filling the job in an 'acting' capacity since Census Bureau director Rob Santos resigned earlier this year. An Inspector General's report last March warned that the bureau has had difficulties hiring and retaining workers to carry out its surveys. Earlier this year, the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, eliminated advisory committees made up of demographers, statisticians and advocacy group leaders who provided expertise to the statistical agency. 'There's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of frustration because information is potentially threatened due to changes in agencies or changes in programs,' O'Hara said. 'There's just this fear that what you had relied on is not going to be available.' ___ Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky at @
