Fast home-building states, like Idaho, have higher birth rates, federal data show
Jon Bahr holds his newborn daughter, Taverie, in March while testing equipment at the new MilkShake Factory franchise in Colorado Springs, Colo., he opened with his wife, Micayla Bahr. Colorado had a 4.5% increase in births last year, the largest in the nation, as births increased nationally for the first time since 2021. (Photo courtesy of Jon Bahr/MilkShake Factory)
The number of births in some Western states that are adding new housing rose last year, reversing losses the year before in many cases, according to new federal statistics released Wednesday.
Increases from 2023 to 2024 were highest in Colorado (4.5%), Idaho (3.8%), Utah (3.6%), Washington state and Nebraska (each 2.6%). Births increased around 2% in West Virginia, South Dakota, North Carolina, Montana, Rhode Island and South Carolina.
Almost all those states had decreases in births the previous year, and many have been building housing rapidly since 2023. Idaho, North Carolina and Utah have issued enough building permits in 2023 and 2024 to add about 4% to their housing stock, the highest in the nation.
Melissa Kearney, an economics professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in families and fertility, said there could be a link between homebuilding and more babies.
'It is quite possible that increased access to home ownership, coming from a reduction in the price of houses in places that are building more houses, could meaningfully increase birth rates,' Kearney told Stateline in an email.
Many of the other states with increases in births are also seeing building booms: Colorado, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and Washington state are all set to add more than 2% to housing stock based on permits issued in 2023 and 2024, according to a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey data.
Building permits can take up to two years to translate into finished houses and apartments, but they indicate which states are most willing to allow new housing that can boost population, tax receipts and the workforce. In Colorado, Denver County is set to add almost 10,000 housing units and in Idaho, Ada County, which includes Boise, could add 11,200 units based on building permits.
Nationally births were slightly higher in 2024 than the year before, by about 1%, according to provisional federal numbers from the National Vital Statistics System within the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The fertility rate also increased slightly, but it remains below the 'replacement level' needed to keep the population stable — 2.1 children for each woman over her lifetime.
All the increase nationally was in births to Hispanic and Asian mothers, with births continuing to decline for Black, American Indian and white mothers. Births to teenagers and women ages 20-24, in sharp decline since 2007, continued to drop last year, while births increased for women 25 and older.
The number of births dropped most in states struggling with stagnant population: falling about 4% in Louisiana, 3% in Mississippi, and 2% in New Mexico and New Hampshire. All those states had little or no population growth between mid-2023 and mid-2024, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.
Stateline, like the Idaho Capital Sun, is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
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