The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and a new report shows that another drop in births in 2023 brought the rate down to the lowest it’s been in more than a century.

There were about 3.6 million babies born in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

After a steep plunge in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fertility rate has fluctuated. But the 3% drop between 2022 and 2023 brought the rate just below the previous low from 2020, which was 56 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age.

  • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Unfortunately because the world runs on speculative investment, a smaller birthrate means less investment in child care, making it harder to find babysitters and daycares

    Japan is already suffering from this, the birthrates are incredibly low but the daycares are packed because nobody is paying daycare workers enough, and nobody is investing enough to build new ones.