US fertility rate dropped to record low in 2023, CDC data shows

Women in the United States are having babies less often, and the fertility rate reached a record low in 2023, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Women in the United States are having babies less often, and the fertility rate reached a record low in 2023, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The US fertility rate has been trending down for decades, with particularly steep dips after the Great Recession of 2008. An uptick in 2021 spurred theories about a Covid-19 “baby bump,” but the birth rate has quickly returned to its more consistent downward pattern. In 2023, the US fertility rate fell another 3% from the year before, to a historic low of about 55 births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to final data published Tuesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Just under 3.6 million babies were born last year, about 68,000 fewer than the year before. Since 2007, when the fertility rate was at its most recent high, the number of births has declined 17%, and the general fertility rate has declined 21%, according to the new report. There’s not one particular reason why fertility rates are on the decline in the US, said Sarah Hayford, director of the Institute for Population Research at The Ohio State University. A number of social and economic factors are probably coming into play, she said. A “package of demographic changes” – people getting married later and less often, spending more years in school and taking longer to get economically established in a steady job, to name a few – align with birth rate trends, said Hayford, who was not involved in the new report.