The US birthrate fell 4 percent last year, the largest single-year decrease in nearly 50 years, a government report released yesterday said.
The rate dropped for mothers of every major race and ethnicity, and in nearly every age group, falling to the lowest point since federal health officials started tracking it more than a century ago.
Births have been declining in younger women for years, as many postponed motherhood and had smaller families.
Photo: Bloomberg
Birthrates for women in their late 30s and in their 40s have been inching up — but not last year.
“The fact that you saw declines in births even for older moms is quite striking,” said Brady Hamilton of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the lead author of the new report.
The CDC report is based on a review of more than 99 percent of birth certificates issued last year. The findings echo a recent Associated Press analysis of data last year from 25 states showing that births had fallen during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic no doubt contributed to last year’s big decline, experts said.
Anxiety about COVID-19 and its effects on the economy likely caused many couples to think that having a baby right then was a bad idea, they added.
However, many of last year’s pregnancies began well before the US outbreak.
CDC researchers are working on a follow-up report to better parse out how the decline unfolded, Hamilton said.
Other highlights from the CDC report included:
About 3.6 million babies were born in the US last year, down from about 3.75 million in 2019. When births were booming in 2007, the US recorded 4.3 million births.
The US birthrate dropped to about 56 births per 1,000 women of child-bearing age, the lowest rate on record. The rate is half of what it was in the early 1960s.
The birthrate for 15-to-19-year-olds dropped 8 percent from 2019. It has fallen almost every year since 1991.
Birthrates fell 8 percent for Asian-American women; 3 percent for Hispanic women; 4 percent for black and white women; and 6 percent for mothers who were American Indians or Alaska Natives.
The caesarean delivery rate, which had been mostly falling since 2009, edged upward to about 32 percent.
Meanwhile, the percentage of infants born small and premature — at less than 37 weeks of gestation — fell slightly, to 10 percent, after rising for five consecutive years.
The current generation is getting further away from having enough children to replace itself.
The US was once among only a few developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured that each generation had enough children to replace it.
About a decade ago, the estimated rate was 2.1 children per US woman, but by last year, it had dropped to about 1.6, the lowest rate on record.
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