Newsweek is running a brief story on the decline of foreign adoption in the U.S.:If Brangelina is any indication, American interest in adopting foreign children is stronger than ever. So why is the United States adopting fewer of them? According to early projections by the State Department, foreign adoptions have dropped an estimated 10 percent from last year—the fourth straight year of decline since the high-water mark of 22,884 in 2004. Experts say the downward trend is likely to continue as countries such as Russia, Guatemala and China, which in recent years had been among the largest providers of orphans for adoption, have either dialed back their programs or ended them entirely. "It's not that American interest has diminished at all, or that there are fewer kids who need homes," says Chuck Johnson of the National Council for Adoption. "The declines are directly the result of bureaucratic or political issues."
Their interactive graph gives additional information when you click on the lines (mine is just a pretty picture of their graph -- not interactive!), and for several of the countries, including Korea, Russia and Ukraine, officials cite declining birth rates in their countries as increasing interest in domestic adoption.
It always makes me feel funny to see this graph and realize that I adopted my daughter from China in 2005 - the biggest year for Chinese adoptions. Like I had jumped on a bandwagon, when in fact I adopted from China because my agency had a waiting child file and were unable to find a waiting family who was interested in her. It will be interesting to see if adoptions from Mexico start to increase in the next few years. All this bickering about keeping Mexicans out of the country, but ok to adopt from there!
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