US fertility rates slump by 2% in a year to lowest on record, with 1.62 births per woman in 2023: Experts say focus on careers and access to contraception is behind the trend

New data shows the number of babies born in the United States has hit an all-time low as experts say women delay having children and concerns about reproductive health care grow.

Just under 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, a 2 percent decline from the previous year, according to preliminary statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of births in the U.S. fell for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, then fell 4 percent between 2019 and 2020. Then it continued to rise for two straight years, a rise that experts attribute in part to pregnancies that couples had postponed during the crisis. the early days of the pandemic.

The numbers released Thursday are based on more than 99.9 percent of birth certificates filed in 2023, but they are preliminary and the final birth count could change as they are finalized.

There could be an adjustment to the 2023 data, but it won’t be enough to erase the “significant” decline seen in the preliminary numbers, said the CDC’s Brady Hamilton, the lead author of the new report.

According to preliminary statistics, just under 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, a decrease of 2 percent from the previous year

“The 2023 numbers seem to indicate that the bump is over and we’re back to the trends we were in before,” said Nicholas Mark, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin who studies how social policies and other factors impact health and affect fertility.

Birth rates among teens and younger women have long been falling, but are rising among women in their 30s and 40s — a reflection of women pursuing education and careers before trying to start a family, experts say.

Mark called this development surprising and said: ‘There are indications that this is not just a matter of postponement.’

CDC data shows that in 2007, the U.S. total fertility rate was 2.12 births per woman, while the 2023 rate of 1.62 shows a steady decline.

“People make pretty reasoned decisions about whether to have a child,” says Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Wall Street Journal.

“More often than not, I think what they decide is, ‘Yes, I would like to have children, but not yet.’

According to an analysis published in the prestigious journal Lancet, the average birth rate in America is predicted to fall to 1.53 by 2050 and rise to 1.45 by 2100.

The concern is that this figure is well below the replacement level of 2.1 children – the number each woman would need on average to replace both parents and maintain the economic environment.

Some women choose to have children later in life and instead focus on their careers during their younger years.

Because fertility is linked to age, this may result in some women never having children or having fewer children than they originally planned.

Experts have previously warned that some are prioritizing careers over families, which they say has put the country on an irreversible path to economic decline.

Many millennials also say they don’t want to have children.

Rising pressure on the cost of living, especially the price of childcare, is another factor putting a damper on couples having children or deciding to have several.

America’s first over-the-counter birth control pill hit the market in March.

Some women choose to have children later in life and use contraception

Experts have wondered how births could be affected by the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed states to ban or restrict abortion. Experts estimate that nearly half of pregnancies are unintended, meaning restrictions on access to abortion could impact birth rates.

The new report indicates that the decision did not lead to a national increase in births, but the researchers did not analyze birth trends in individual states or parse data across all demographic groups.

The new data raises the possibility of an impact on teens. The US teen birth rate has been declining for decades, but the decline has been less dramatic in recent years, and the decline appears to have stopped for teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 17.

“That could be Dobbs,” said Dr. John Santelli, a professor of public and family health and pediatrics at Columbia University. Or it could be related to changes in sex education or access to contraception, he added.

Whatever the case, the flattening of birth rates among high school students is concerning and indicates that “whatever we’re doing for kids in middle and high school is faltering,” Santelli said.