The majority of babies now born to women over the age of 30 – and a record number of them, become first-time parents before the age of 40!

The average age of a new mother in America is over 30, according to new data.

More than half of babies born in 2023 were women in their 30s, preliminary CDC data shows, ahead of those born in their teens and 20s.

Meanwhile, a record number of women had their first child in their 40s – with 12.6 per 1,000 births among women aged 40 to 44 last year.

Experts have attributed the shift to the rising cost of living in the US and women prioritizing their careers and education before settling down to start a family, as well as the availability of IVF.

The rise of older mothers has also sparked debate about whether women waiting to have children are at risk of complications or fit into a “maternal sweet spot” thanks to greater stability and resources.

Preliminary data from the CDC’s Wonder database shows that about half of babies in the U.S. are born to women over 30, while the number of births to younger mothers has declined.

In contrast, the number of teenage pregnancies reached a record low, with 13.6 births per 1,000 women. This was two percent less than the year before, but was still higher than the rate for women over 40.

And once the norm: an all-time low number of women had babies in their early twenties. The birth rate for women aged 20 to 24 fell from 61.5 per 1,000 the year before to 57.5 per 1,000.

The CDC report found that there were 3.67 million births in the US in 2022, which researchers said was “essentially unchanged from 2021.”

Although there was an increase in the number of births of one percent between 2019 and 2020, this average decreased by one percent per year between 2014 and 2019. ‘Previously, the number of births fell by an average of two percent per year between 2007 and 2013 and increased by one percent. in 2014,” the researchers wrote.

The data was part of the 2022 National Vital Statistics Report on Birth Data produced by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Preliminary data for 2023 was collected through CDC’s Wonder database.

The figures were collected from birth certificates registered in all 50 states and DC, as well as US territories such as Puerto Rico, Guam and the US Virgin Islands.

The overall birth rate for women over 40 was 12.6 per 1,000 births, a record high.

This graph shows the total number of live births per year. Fertility has fallen in the US in recent years

This chart shows the annual birth rate for women by age group as of 2022. The number of mothers having their first children in the 1940s has reached a record high, at 12.6 per 1,000 births. This rate has increased steadily since the 1990s, while the number of pregnancies among teenagers and women in their early twenties has decreased

Researchers have suggested that women are waiting to have children because they are focusing on their careers and using assisted reproductive technology such as IVF.

This increased from 12 in 2021. For women over 50, when menopause typically hits, that rate was 1.2 per 10,000, up from 0.9 in 2021. The researchers said this measure is calculated as a rate per 10,000 due to the lower number of births. in this category.

The rate was highest among women aged 30 to 34, at 97.5 per 1,000. However, this remained virtually unchanged compared to 2021. For women aged 25 to 29, the birth rate was 93.5 per 1,000.

Older mothers were most common in Washington DC, with 24.5 per 1,000 births among women aged 40 to 44.

Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center who collected DC birth data in 2019, told WAMU that a ‘huge factor’ is the level of education, as women in DC are more likely to have advanced degrees and work in demanding government jobs.

“We have a very highly educated population here, and generally the higher education someone has, the lower their fertility is,” she said.

According to the DC Office of Planning, more than 55 percent of women in DC have at least a bachelor’s degree, and one in three have a college or professional degree.

Marriage can also be a factor, Livingston said. “There are a lot of people who may not have gotten to the point of getting married yet.”

“On the one hand, we hear so much about out-of-wedlock birth, but the fact is that a married person has a much greater chance of having a child than an unmarried one.”

New York and New Jersey followed closely with 18.8 and 17.4 births per 1,000, respectively, and California and Hawaii rounded out the top five.

This may be due to the fact that both states have large metropolitan areas such as New York City, Jersey City, and Newark.

West Virginia, meanwhile, had the lowest percentage of new mothers over 40. Only 6.1 per 1,000 births occurred among women ages 40 to 44, the data found.

Only one in five women over 25 has a bachelor’s degree in the Mountain State, research shows, although that’s an eight percent increase since 2000.

Additionally, 17.9 percent of the state’s people (approximately 308,000) live in poverty.

Both factors can increase the likelihood that women will have children at a younger age.

West Virginia had significantly higher birth rates for mothers in their 20s, with 81.1 for women aged 20 to 24 and 107.6 for women aged 25 to 29.

In terms of the number of new mothers ages 40 to 44, Minnesota and Wyoming followed closely with 6.9 and 7.3 births per 1,000 women, respectively.