NEW YORK — The U.S. birth rate fell last year, resuming a long national decline.
Just under 3.6 million babies will be born in 2023, according to interim statistics released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about 76,000 fewer than the previous year and the lowest number in a year since 1979.
U.S. births declined for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, then fell 4% between 2019 and 2020. After that, they rose for two consecutive years, an increase that experts attribute, in part, to pregnancies that couples postponed. early days of the pandemic.
But “the 2023 numbers seem to indicate that this increase is over and that we are back to the trends we were on before,” said Nicholas Mark, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin who studies how social policy and other factors influence health and fertility.
Birth rates have long been declining for teenagers and younger women, but rising for women in their 30s and 40s – a reflection of women pursuing education and careers before trying to start families. say experts. But last year, birth rates fell for all women under 40 and remained stable for women in their 40s.
Mark called this development surprising and said “there is some evidence that it’s not just a delay happening.”
Rates fell across nearly all racial and ethnic groups.
The numbers released Thursday are based on more than 99.9% of birth certificates submitted in 2023, but they are provisional and the final birth count could change as they are finalized. For example, the 2022 provisional birth count appeared to show a decline, but it turned out to be higher than the 2021 count when the analysis was completed.
There may be an adjustment to the 2023 data, but it won’t be enough to erase the “considerable” decline seen in the interim numbers, said Brady Hamilton of the CDC, the first author of the new report.
Experts question how births might be affected by the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to ban or restrict abortion. Experts estimate that almost half of pregnancies are unintended, so limits on access to abortion could affect the number of births.
The new report indicates that the decision did not lead to a national increase in births, but researchers did not analyze birth trends in individual states or dissect data among all demographic groups.
The new data raises the possibility of an impact on teenagers. The U.S. teen birth rate has been falling for decades, but the decline has been less dramatic in recent years, and the drop appears to have stopped for teenage girls ages 15 to 17.
“It could be Dobbs,” said Dr. John Santelli, a professor of population, 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 decline in birth rates among high school students is worrying and indicates that “everything we are doing for elementary and secondary school children is failing,” Santelli said.
More findings from the report:
—From 2022 to 2023, the tentative number of births fell 5% for American Indian and Alaska Native women, 4% for Black women, 3% for white women, and 2% for Asian American women. Births increased by 1% for Hispanic women.
—The percentage of babies born prematurely remained stable.
—The cesarean birth rate rose again, to 32.4% of births. Some experts worry that cesarean sections are performed more frequently than is medically necessary.
—The US was once among the few developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself – about 2.1 children per woman. But it has been decreasing and, in 2023, it fell to around 1.6, the lowest rate ever recorded.
Research suggests that many American couples would prefer to have two or more children, but view housing, job security, and the cost of child care as significant obstacles to having more children.
“There’s something stopping them from achieving those goals,” Mark said.
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