Credit: 123RF.com

Women aren’t the only ones putting off having children in the United States these days. The average age of fathers has also increased—by three and a half years over the past four decades, according to a new study in Human Reproduction. (emphasis added)

The average paternal age at the time of an American child’s birth rose from 27.4 in 1974 to 30.9 in 2015. Over that same period, the percentage of dads over 40 when their children were born more than doubled—from 4.1% to 8.9%—and the percentage over 50 grew from 0.5% to 0.9%, according to data from all live births reported to the U. S. government from 1972 to 2015—a total of nearly 169 million babies.

Dads were older regardless of their income, their ethnicity or where they lived. Japanese and Vietnamese-American […]

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