Countries like Italy and Japan have been famously struggling to raise their birthrates to sustain their aging populations, and it turns out that the United States might not be doing super well, either.
New CDC data released this month reveals that while the number of births in the United States increased by 1% from 2023—to 3,628,934 in 2024—the general fertility rate has declined by 1%. It now stands at 53.8 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, an all-time low. The data is based on U.S. birth certificates.
The general fertility rate—the number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age (approximately 15 to 44 years old)—can decline even while the total number of births increases, because while there are more women having babies, a smaller percentage of all women are doing so.
The data also shows that, from 2023 to 2024, birth rates decreased for women between 15 and 34 years old, remained stable for women between 35 and 39 years old, and increased for women between 40 and 44 years old. The percentage of women who relied on Medicaid as the primary source of payment for the delivery decreased in all three age groups, a total drop of 3% from 2023 to 2024. More broadly, between 2007, the most recent high, and 2023, births in the U.S. decreased by 16%. Between 2007 and 2024, the general fertility rate saw an even greater drop of 22%.
Provisional birth data released in April also provided insight into the US’s recent total fertility rate—the average number of children a woman would birth in her lifetime according to age-specific fertility rates. The U.S.’s total fertility rate in 2024 was 1,626.5 births per 1,000 women, or 1.6 per woman. That’s beneath the replacement level, “at which a given generation can exactly replace itself,” which is 2.1 children per woman, per the data brief.
The U.S. used to be one of the few developed countries with a total fertility rate at or higher than the replacement rate, according to the Associated Press. Since 2007, however, the rate has been consistently below replacement. For comparison, Italy and Japan were at 1.2 children per woman in 2023, France was at 1.7, Spain was at 1.1, and Germany at 1.4. Karen Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, tells the Associated Press that couples are delaying marriage and worrying about having enough resources to raise children.
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