US fertility rate dropped to lowest in a century as US births dipped in 2023 | CNN
www.cnn.com
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 century.

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.

  • Infernalism@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    7 months ago

    We noticed the dropping fertility rate as far back as 1935. The US government noted, with horror, that the fertility rate had dropped in 100 years from 7.0 to 2.1.

    Since then, we’ve been steadily dropping, augmenting our fertility rate with increased immigration. But, that’s a short term solution, as immigrants usually drop from high-count families to 1 or 2 kids within two generations.

    Simply put, kids are an expensive hobby with no financial upside in an industrial society.

    And with every current generation, it’s going to get smaller and smaller until, within 40 or 50 years, there just won’t be enough workers/consumers to maintain the capitalist/economic system of most of the industrialized world.

    Can’t wait to see what happens then.