Americans are finally starting to have more babies, a trend driven by older and better-educated women who were less affected by the recession, according to new projections released Thursday in time for a gathering of the Population Association of America in Boston.

Demographic Intelligence, a for-profit forecasting firm, predicts that this year, for the first time since 2007, the number of births in the U.S. will start climbing, hitting 3.95 million, after bottoming out at a 15-year low of 3.94 million in 2013. American women are now expected to have 1.89 children over their lifetimes, up from a 25-year-low of about 1.87 in 2013, the firm said.