The city’s birth rate has plummeted to its lowest level in 35 years — even though condom use in some neighborhoods is stretched mighty thin, city Health Department data shows.
Rubbers were least likely to be deployed in Brooklyn’s hipster haven of Greenpoint, where just 14.2 percent of men told surveyors they practiced protected sex in 2012.
The citywide birth rate that year was 14.8 per 1,000 people, the same as it was in 1979 — and a drop of nearly 4 percent from 2003.
Fueling the falling rate was the continued decline of teenage pregnancies. They hit a new low of 23.6 births per 1,000 women in the 15-to-19 year age group.
That’s a drop of more than 32 percent since 2003.
But in some parts of the city, baby strollers could be found on just about every block.
The Borough Park section of Brooklyn, home to one of the largest enclaves of Orthodox Jews, took the fertility crown with an astonishing birth rate of 28.5 per 1,000 — nearly double the city wide rate.
Two other Brooklyn neighborhoods took the No. 2 and 3 spots.
Sunset Park, with a fast-growing Asian population, came in at 25.1 births per 1,000 population and Williamsburg/Greenpoint — home to the Satmar Hasidic sect and its large families — registered 20.1
The surprising fourth place finisher on the Health Department list was Tribeca/ Lower Manhattan, where well-off couples have taken root and are forming families at a rate of 19 births per 1,000 residents.
Asians and Pacific islanders led all other ethnic groups, with a birth rate of 18.8 per 1,000, compared to 15.2 for Hispanics and 14.2 for whites.
Blacks had the lowest rate at 13 per 1,000 people.
Experts said the city’s falling birth rate was part of a global trend.
“Birth rates have been declining for the past several decades all over the world, aside from sub-Saharan Africa,” said Wendy Chavkin, professor emerita of population and family health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
She said birth patterns in the northeast US “approximate those of Europe.”
The birth rate drop comes despite Health Department findings that most couples are having sex without condoms, led by Greenpoint where nearly 86 percent of men said they didn’t use rubbers.
Condom use peaked in Central Harlem (43.3 percent) and Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights (40 percent).
The findings also showed continuing trends of older women giving birth and more births by Cesarean section.
Women aged 30 to 39 had the highest birth rate. There were 87.1 births per 1,000 women in that age group.
Women in their 20s had 73.9 births per 1,000, women 15 to 19 had 23. 6 births per 1,000 — and women in their 40s had 11.4 births per thousand.
“Striking to me is the increase in later life births and multiple births among white women, presumably associated with employment, delay in first birth and use of assisted reproductive technologies, like IVF,” Chavkin said.
C-sections jumped from 27 percent of all births in the city in 2003 to 33.1 percent in 2009 and then fell slightly to 32.7 percent in 2012.
Highest Birth Rates
(Live births per 1,000 population)
Borough Park– 28.5
Sunset Park-25.1
Williamsburg/Greenpoint–20.1
BatteryPark/Tribeca-19
Lowest Birth Rates
Bayside–6.2
Throgs Neck–7.7
Queens Village–8.5
Tottenville–9.0
Most Condom Use
Central Harlem–43.3%
Union Square/Lower Manhattan–40.7%
Flushing/Clearview–40.2%
Bed Stuy/Crown Heights-40%
Least Condom Use
Greenpoint–14.2%
Ridgewood/Forest Hills–20%
Norhern Staten Island–22.3%
Upper West Side–22.6%
Source: NYC Health Department Community Health Survey 2012