(File Photo of the Allegheny Health Network Logo)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) According to recent data from Allegheny Health Network (AHN), the average age of first-time mothers who gave birth at an AHN labor and delivery unit last year was 31.1 years old, exceeding the national average by more than three years. AHN’s higher-than-average numbers in Western Pennsylvania are consistent with trends across the United States, as first-time mothers tend to be older in both areas that are urban and toward the coasts and younger in areas that are rural like the Great Plains and the South. Schooling is the biggest factor for this variation because cities that are big tend to have a larger proportion of college graduates than areas that are rural and women that have college degrees have children at an average of seven years later than women that do not have college degrees.