out of wedlock births

The illegitimacy rate among black Americans began to reach troubling levels even before the pill and the sexual revolution. "Both white and Negro illegitimacy rates have been increasing, although from dramatically different bases," observed Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his famous 1965 report. "The white rate was 2 percent in 1940; it was 3.07 percent in 1963. In that period, the Negro rate went from 16.8 percent to 23.6 percent." The black illegitimacy rate now approaches 75%; the white rate is higher than the black rate was in the 1960s.