Americans having fewer children now than before: report

Americans are having fewer children now than before, a demographic trend that has alarmed some conservatives in particular, some of which is likely a result of social and economic factors, like steep child care costs, housing prices and more people choosing to forgo starting families, reported Xinhua, quoting The New York Times on Tuesday.

According to figures released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this year, the general fertility rate in the United States decreased by 3 percent from 2022, reaching a historic low. This marks the second consecutive year of decline, following a brief 1 percent increase from 2020 to 2021. From 2014 to 2020, the rate consistently decreased by 2 percent annually.

The CDC measures the general fertility rate as the total number of live births in a year per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. In 2023, the most recent year of data available, the fertility rate in the United States was around 54 births per 1,000 women of reproductive age, which appears to be a historic low.

Another way researchers look at fertility is using the total fertility rate, which estimates the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her reproductive years. In 2023, the total fertility rate in the United States was a little over 1.6 births per woman, lower than the roughly two births per woman documented in 2001.

The CDC calculates birthrate by dividing the number of live births over the course a year by the total population. In 2022, for example, there were 11 births for every 1,000 people. In 1995, that number was 14.8 per 1,000 people.

Meanwhile, the CDC tracks infertility by assessing the number of married women between the ages of 15 and 49 who report having had unprotected sex for at least a year without becoming pregnant. This metric excludes women who have been surgically sterilized. Infertility rates have appeared relatively stable over the last several decades, with the latest data from 2015 to 2019 showing that 2.4 million married women of reproductive age were infertile.