For every 1,000 women, aged 15-44, approximately 53 gave birth last year - down from 54 the previous year, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Birth rates decreased among those up to age 29 but increased for women aged 30-44, the CDC found.
The findings are indicative of a broader U.S. trend in recent decades and one that the Trump administration and its MAGA allies, including Elon Musk, have sought to reverse.
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However, there are multiple factors complicating efforts to reverse the trend. Greater access to IUDs and birth control have helped reduce teen births, which has long been a goal for U.S. policymakers because of the complications young mothers with underdeveloped bodies face during pregnancy.
“People are able to avoid having kids at points in their life when they don’t feel it’s the right time,” Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told NBC News Wednesday.
A shift in women’s education has also had a major impact. Women now make up the majority of the college-educated workforce, according to the Pew Research Center.
Those with college degrees generally have fewer children, 2022 University of Pennsylvania research shows. That’s largely because of a focus on establishing careers, traveling or finding a romantic partner.
But many women who want to have children are facing major headwinds - economic ones. The average cost of raising a child in the U.S. has ballooned to more than $300,000, the financial marketplace LendingTree says, rising nearly 2 percent from a year ago. That’s increased from $230,000 in 2000, the bank SoFi says.
And while marriage could help distribute some of that financial burden between two, fewer women are heading to the altar. The marriage rate has fallen 60 percent over the last five decades, according to 2023 research.
“Examining age-specific fertility rates, marriage rates and trends in women’s educational attainment, it is clear many women are delaying fertility and ultimately having fewer children,” the university said.
Do they really just expect everyone to keep having more kids forever? They always frame this as a problem with women but it just seems like a consequence of reality to anyone living in it.
thats why they are banning abortions, removing contraception and ice having breeding farms in texas. they tried nothing but nothing happening.
our local state universities, one faculty employee blamed the low enrollment on the low birth rate, no its not that. its the lack of development for career(experience) and jobs after graduation.
I honestly don’t think that if all economic barriers to having kids came down and removed was all access to contraception that it would cause the younger generation to have significantly more kids. Young people just don’t have sex as much as they used to and the causes for that are myriad.
They expect to use the falling fertility rates to force women to have more children. This is one of the reasons they are trying to strip women of our right to healthcare and voting. Because without birth control, abortion, and education, women and girls will be forced to have babies they don't want again. And they will be under control of men.
Step 2 is bringing back child labor, I suppose, to make feasible the economics of having children in times like these.
They're already there as well:
State lawmakers continued to weaken child labor protections in 2026
White women.
The obvious solution to sub-replacement fertility rate is to expand immigration. Not only does that directly increase population, but immigrant families tend to have more children. Somehow, though, the same people screaming about fertility rates are also screaming about immigration. It's almost like they only want one particular kind of baby.
whats the matter, why dont cons tell thier conservative white women to have children.
It’s why Roe fell. They feel entitled to us. This subset of men has been flailing and teaching their kids that flail, since the 70s.
I always appreciate when I see your username pop up, Zephora.
You’re completely correct. The domino effect has been going for a while now. Pulling back Roe has led to so many deaths and tragedies already.
Once again, women’s liberation is only 50 years old. As such, we get blamed for a lot when a certain subset of men are unhappy with any part of life we touch, or don’t touch, whatever the case.
We can’t just live our lives, we owe them something.
Capitalism needs continuous growth to keep moving wealth upwards.