The U.S. fertility rate dropped to an all-time low last year, continuing a 20-year trend, federal health officials revealed Thursday.
The number of births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 44 dropped 1%, from 54.5 in 2023 to 53.8 in 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in releasing new data.
That translated to an overall fertility rate of 1.6 for 2024. Demographers consider an average of 2.1 children born per 1,000 women during their reproductive lifetime as the benchmark for replacing the population each generation. The U.S. rate now nearly matches Western Europe’s, World Bank data indicates.
At the same time, the overall number of births increased 1% between 2023 and 2024, the CDC said, to 3.6 million babies born. Teens had fewer babies on average, as did women in their 20s and early 30s, while the birth rate stayed flat among women aged 35 to 39. However, women aged 40 to 44 saw a 2% increase.
“We’re seeing this as part of an ongoing process of fertility delay,” University of Colorado researcher Leslie Root told The Associated Press. “We know that the U.S. population is still growing, and we still have a natural increase — more births than deaths.”
While economic hardship tends to depress the fertility rate temporarily, it usually recovers along with the economy, according to the Pew Charitable Trust. But that pattern “broke after the 2007-09 Great Recession, when fertility rates fell and never bounced back,” Pew said in a report on Monday. The rate was further pressured by the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020.
The United States’ current upheaval is not terribly conducive to childbearing, said Karen Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina. Moreover, recent federal cash incentives to have kids “are largely symbolic” and don’t address would-be parents’ concerns, mainly parental leave and child care, she said.
“I don’t think anything that is happening right now is going to encourage people to have births,” Guzzo said. “They’re worried about things, and worry is not a good moment to have kids.”
With News Wire Services
https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/07/24/us-fertility-rate-drops-all-time-low/