America's fertility crash reaches a new low

Mint

06-08-2025

When a woman of child-bearing age in Salt Lake City was growing up, her parents were typically religious, had married before they turned 25 and would go on to stay together. Her life today is similar: Utah is even more religious; more children grow up in two-parent households than anywhere else in America. There is just one difference. Today's mother would have grown up as one of three siblings, yet she has fewer than two children herself.
In 1960 America's total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman could be expected to have, was 3.6. By 2022 it had fallen to 1.7. Recent data released by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an official body, show a further drop since then, to just under 1.6—the lowest rate on record. Women in every state are having fewer children.
Inspect the distribution of births, and a revealing patchwork of plateaus and plunges emerges. In recent years, birth rates have dropped only slightly in places where they have long been low. Four of the five least fertile states in 2014, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, have seen their rates decrease by less than the national average. It is in states that have been historically the most fertile where the fall has been precipitous; Alaska, North Dakota and Utah have seen some of the steepest declines (see map). All told, states that had above average fertility rates in 2014 are responsible for more than 80% of the collapse in American birth rates over the past decade.
This presents a challenge for pronatalist policymakers and researchers. They have long focused their attention on states with low fertility rates, which are often urban and educated. For instance, Lyman Stone, an economist who has advised the Trump administration, has urged other states to follow 'the Utah way'. In his view, relatively few women in the state want to delay childbirth for a professional career, and its high levels of religiosity increase family stability. Indeed, the White House is now said to be considering reserving college places for couples who put their education on hold to have children.
Yet the recent decline in birth rates is concentrated in rural places and those where people tend to have less education. Although Utah has plenty of worshippers, they are having fewer children. Pronatalist types often argue in favour of supplying homes with space for big families; now, even in places with plenty of space, birth rates are dropping. This mainly reflects changing behaviour among young women, who are having fewer unplanned births. Whereas in 2005 most women in Utah had their first child before the age of 25, today fewer than one in four do.
Policymakers looking to prompt more births have few tools at their disposal. America's fertility rate dropped firmly below 2.1—the level required to keep the population stable without immigration—almost two decades ago. In the years since, few convincing explanations for the trend have emerged. The CDC's recent data have alarmed researchers and the White House. Both worry that the lower birth rates fall, the lower the chance they will ever recover. In their search for a fix, they may have to start looking in new places.