US birth rates languish in record lows, CDC reports

Boston Globe

24-04-2025

These numbers, and the reasons that they have experienced such a consistent decline, are widely seen as a problem that could affect the US economy in coming decades, as fewer young workers support a growing aging population.
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President Trump has called for a 'baby boom,' joining with a conservative 'pronatalist' movement that aims to persuade more Americans to get married and have many babies.
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Vice President JD Vance and others in the pronatalist movement have criticized childless young Americans, arguing that they are contributing to the potential collapse of the US population because of their disdain for nuclear families and traditional gender roles.
The decrease is due in part to a remarkable shift in who is giving birth: Much of the long-term trend can be attributed to the substantial reductions in teenage pregnancies over the last several decades.
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In 1991, the most recent national peak in teen births, 61.8 births occurred per 1,000 15- to 19-year-olds, but that number was down to 12.7 births by 2024, a record low.
Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the fertility rate in the United States was around two children per woman, roughly at the level needed to maintain the population through births alone, said Karen Benjamin Guzzo, a family demographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
But those numbers were actually propped up by the high rate of teen pregnancies, distinguishing the United States from nations in Europe and Asia, which were already grappling with fertility rates well below replacement levels without the high levels of teen pregnancies.
'We were really unique in that, embarrassingly so,' Guzzo said.
Starting around 2000, expanded access to contraception slowly helped drive down the rate of unintended pregnancies and teen pregnancies, which have continued to decline since.
But especially since the Great Recession, birth rates have fallen off in another group: women in their 20s. In 2007, there were 106.3 births per 1,000 20- to 24-year-olds, but those numbers were down to 56.7 by 2024. The highest birth rate in 2007 was among 25- to 29-year-olds, at 117.5 births per 1,000 women; those numbers dropped to 91.4 in 2024.
Those declines have not been matched by similar increases in births among women in their 30s.
'One of the big questions is all these births that haven't occurred — are they just being delayed?' Johnson said. 'Are these women going to have these babies later than they would have otherwise? Or are a lot of these births going to be forgone entirely?'
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The recent data seems to suggest that at least some people are forgoing having children altogether, Johnson said, adding, 'Births in older women are up a little bit, but not enough to make up for all those births that didn't occur.'
But in surveys, many young Americans still say they want to have two children. While shifting attitudes may play a role in the decline in childbearing, demographers point to the increasing number of obstacles faced by people who might want to start families.
Economic conditions — crushing student debt, no federally mandated paid family leave, the high cost of child care and out-of-reach homeownership — and a general sense of instability in the world are likely to be playing a big role in Americans' postponement of parenting, Guzzo said.
'People don't have kids when they don't feel good about their own futures,' she said.
A raft of proposals discussed within the Trump administration to give Americans incentives to have more babies includes increasing funding to parts of the country with higher-than-average birth and marriage rates, giving a $5,000 'baby bonus' to new mothers and increasing prestigious Fulbright scholarships for people who are married or have children.
While some of those ideas have drawn support from Democrats who have long argued for more help for working families, it's doubtful that one-time interventions will actually meaningfully increase the birth rate, experts said.
And it's unlikely that an increased fertility rate alone will fuel the population gain needed to get back to replacement levels, Johnson said.
'Of course immigration is another factor,' he added. Most immigrants are young and are relocating in order to start families. 'Immigrants don't just bring themselves,' he said. 'They bring the potential for babies in the future.'
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