First of all, I'd like to give a big shout out to all the Hispanics!
Second of all, I think we need to have a massive dog owners tax, else the only thing Millennials and Gen X, Y & Z will be raising is a generation of Fidos.
Don't worry about owning a home. Move in with your parents and put the final nail in the coffin. You already took their retirement savings (college stupid)...time to finish them off.
U.S. Fertility Rate Falls to Record Low
Fewer babies were born in the U.S. in 2023 than any year since 1979
By Jennifer Calfas and Anthony DeBarros, WSJ
April 25, 2024
About 3.59 million children were born in the U.S. in 2023, a 2% drop compared with 3.66 million in 2022.
American women are giving birth at record-low rates.
The total fertility rate fell to 1.62 births per woman in 2023, a 2% decline from a year earlier, federal data released Thursday showed. It is the lowest rate recorded since the government began tracking it in the 1930s.
The decline reflects a continuing trend as American women navigate economic and social challenges that have prompted some to forgo or delay having children. A confluence of factors are at play. American women are having fewer children, later in life. Women are establishing fulfilling careers and have more access to contraception.
At the same time, young people are also more uncertain about their futures and spending more of their income on homeownership, student debt and child care. Some women who wait to have children might have fewer than they would have otherwise for reasons including declining fertility.
“People are making rather reasoned decisions about whether or not to have a child at all,” said Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “More often than not, I think what they’re deciding is ‘Yes, I’d like to have children, but not yet.’”
Total fertility estimates the number of children a woman would give birth to in her lifetime. The estimates don’t account for what women actually decide in later years, said Brady Hamilton, a co-author of the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The number of births last year was the lowest since 1979, according to provisional data. About 3.59 million children were born in the U.S. in 2023, a 2% drop compared with 3.66 million in 2022.
The figures are provisional and likely to adjust slightly when final data are released later this year.
Take a look inside America’s declining birth numbers:
Total fertility rate hits record low
The total fertility rate peaked during the baby boom after World War II, with a rate of more than three births per woman before falling through the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, the total fertility rate has declined steadily since hitting 2.12 births per woman in 2007, before the financial crisis.
The rate in the U.S. has remained generally under or around 2.1 children per woman, or what is known as the “replacement rate,” since the 1970s. A rate of 1.62 in 2023 marks a new low and a sign of years of decline.
Births continue to fall
Births in 2023 were lower than any year since 1979, the data show. U.S. births edged up slightly during and after the Covid pandemic.
The long-term effects of lowering rates could shape the economy, programs including Social Security and other facets of American life, said Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College. “It has the ability to have a significant impact on the way we live for a long time to come,” he said.
An influx of people immigrating to the U.S. could offset the impact of lower birthrates on the U.S. population’s size, said Hamilton, the report author. Immigration has risen in recent years, easing labor shortages and expanding the population of big metropolitan areas.
Birthrate for women in late 30s nears rate for women in their early 20s
Birthrates declined more for younger women between 2022-2023, according to the provisional data, while those for women in their 40s were unchanged.
Women in their mid-to-late 30s are having children at similar rates to those in their early to mid-20s. Birthrates for women 35-39 fell to 54.7 births per 1,000 women—closer to the rates for women 20-24, which dropped 4% to 55.4 births per 1,000 women in 2023.
Should officials take steps to reverse the declining birthrate of Americans? If so, what should those be? Join the conversation below.
Some women in their 20s might postpone having children. Despite fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization, egg freezing and artificial insemination, trying to have children later in life can carry lower odds of success and health risks.
While birthrates for teenagers 15-19 continue to decline, they fell just 3% last year—a lower rate than the average 7% annual decline researchers recorded between 2007-2022. It is unclear what might have contributed to the change, Hamilton said.
“There’s going to be a lot of interest and investigation into why we’re seeing this,” he said.
2016
Fertility rates fall for race and ethnic groups
The general fertility rate dropped 3% to 54.4 births per 1,000 women ages 15-44, with declines across most race and ethnicity groups tracked by the federal government. The fertility rate for Hispanic women, after rising in 2022, fell by 1% to 65 births per 1,000 women. Among non-Hispanic groups, fertility rates for American Indian and Alaska Native and Black women fell by 5% and by 3% for Asian and white women.
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