Hispanic births rose 50,000 last year while white births fell 55,000, new data shows

Hispanic women had 50,000 more babies last year than in 2021, while white women had 55,000 fewer, new government data showed Thursday as the latest sign of America’s changing demographics.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics showed that America’s diversifying population was moving toward a white minority population.

That is estimated to happen sometime in the 2040s.

Overall, U.S. births fell from 3,664,292 in 2021 to 3,661,220 last year, according to the CDC’s preliminary birth data for 2022.

But birth rates varied widely among the different ethnic groups in America.

White women will have 55,124 fewer babies in 2022 than in the previous year — a 3 percent decrease.

Other groups – African Americans and Native Americans – saw smaller declines in their birth rates.

But Asian, Hispanic, and Native Hawaiian women all had more babies.

Hispanic women saw the birth rate increase by 4 percent in 2022, with 48,926 more babies than in the previous year.

Birth rates are a controversial topic. They fuel some people’s concerns that the US is becoming too diverse.

Others say America needs more babies of all ethnicities and even some immigrants to stave off a declining, aging population, with more working-age people to keep the economy vibrant.

Births fell by an average of 2 percent per year between 2014 and 2020, including a 4 percent drop between 2019 and 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

That year saw the lowest birth rate since 1980.

The total fertility rate in 2022 remained below the replacement threshold – the level at which population size remains stable.

The fertility rate of the US (green) and UK (orange) dropped rapidly in the 1970s, and despite occasional small upticks, it has steadily declined over the years

Fertility in the US has fallen sharply in recent decades (above). The average American woman now has only 1.6 children over her lifetime, well below the replacement level of 2.1. It’s down 15 percent from the rate of 1.9 in 2010. North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alaska are the most fertile states in America, with more than 65 annual births per 1,000 fertile elderly women (center left). Fertility rates fell the most since 2005 in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and California (center right)

The U.S. birth rate has been consistently below the replacement rate since 2007.

The fall in births was widespread last year, with 38 states and the District of Columbia experiencing declines.

In general, states in the southern US saw an increase in 2022. Significant decreases were seen in Illinois, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and California.

Meanwhile, Texas added nearly 16,000 births and Florida added 8,000.

The Covid-19 outbreak changed behavior and affected birth rates, Phil Levine, an economist at Wellesley College, told CNN.

Americans may have had less sex or used more contraceptives to delay having children at a time when prenatal care was limited and borders closed, Levine said.

The provisional data for 2022 is based on 99.9 percent of birth certificates issued.

Agencies contributed to this report.