America’s birth rate keeps dropping
Births in the US, like almost everywhere else, are on the decline
Conceived notion
New provisional data released yesterday by the CDC outlined another drop in US births, as the total fertility rate fell from 1.66 births per woman in 2022 to 1.62 last year — equivalent to about 3.6 million births, less than any year since 1979, and the lowest rate recorded since tracking began in the 1930s.
America’s fertility rate peaked at ~3.7 births per woman during a baby boom in the late ‘50s so substantial that it became the moniker of an entire generation. It dropped sharply in the 1960s and 70s, before picking back up. In 2007, it reached 2.1 for the last time — the birth rate required for the natural population to replace itself from one generation to the next (theoretically).
And, America’s not alone in its baby bust.
On a global scale, fertility is falling fast.
The global rate has roughly halved over the past 50 years to ~2.3 births per woman, and it’s a trend that cuts across cultures, language, and incomes. Just this week, the Korea Times reported that births in South Korea, which has the widest gender pay gap of any OECD country, had dropped below 20,000 in February — the first time that threshold had been breached, despite its government spending ~$280bn on child-rearing incentives. In Italy, there are now 12 deaths for every 7 births in the nation. The population of China, once-famed for its one-child policy, is now also shrinking.
Although throwing money at a fertility shortfall might temper the trend in the short term, it fails to address some of the longer-term factors. Unequal labor divides within households, the rising cost of raising a child, increasing access to contraception, economic insecurity, lowering male fertility rates, and a desire to delay starting a family have all been posited as reasons for the declines.
Related reading: Teen birth rates plunge 78% since peaking in 1991.
