A baby boomlet is aborning in the United States. And, contrary to popular perception, the jump in births isn’t explained away by the surge in Hispanic immigration. Non-Hispanic whites and other sub-groups of the population are having more babies, too, and the total number of births in 2006, some 4.3 million, was the highest since 1961. Reviewing the data, publicized in January, some experts are saying there’s something about our country as a whole that makes its citizenry more baby-friendly, on average, than other industrialized Western nations. “Americans like children. We are the only people who respond to prosperity by saying, ‘Let’s have another kid,’” Nan Marie Astone, associate professor of population, family and reproductive health at Johns Hopkins University, told the Associated Press. Illustration by Kevin Bedan