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United States

US Birthrate Hits New Low, CDC Data Shows (thehill.com) 323

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Births in the United States dropped again between 2022 and 2023, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The national birth rate has been steadily declining for the last 17 years, with a particularly steep drop in births between 2007 and 2009 during the Great Recession. Between 2007 and 2022, the U.S. birth rate fell by nearly 23 percent, according to CDC data. There were 3,596,017 registered births in 2023, about 2 percent fewer than in 2022, when there were 3,667,758 registered births, according to CDC data.

The general fertility rate fell by nearly 3 percent last year to 54.5 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. That's down from the 2022 rate of 56 births per 1,000 women, CDC data shows. Teen births have declined almost every year since the 1990s and are continuing to fall. The teenage birth rate dropped by 4 percent between 2022 and 2023, from 13.6 to 13.1 births per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19, according to the CDC. And the birth rate for teens between the ages of 15 and 17, specifically, declined by 2 percent from 5.6 to 5.5 births per 1,000 girls. In 2007, the general fertility rate reached a height not seen since the 1990s at 69.5 births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44, 1 percentage point higher than the year before, according to CDC data.

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US Birthrate Hits New Low, CDC Data Shows

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  • by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2024 @10:47PM (#64722472)

    For the generation who can barely afford rent and owning a home is just right out of the question, does it come as any surprise no one wants to do the whole family thing ?

    If they don't get the whole excessive cost of living thing under control and soon, things are going to fall right off a cliff in a generation or two.

    • Who will make the income and pay taxes to keep the pyramid scheme going? If people aren't going to have as many kids, then migrants become essential.
      • Who will make the income and pay taxes to keep the pyramid scheme going?

        Robots and AI.

        • Robots and AI.

          This strikes me as almost certainly correct. However, I'm expecting the transition itself and the initial economic forms to be pretty awful. There's too much inertia in our (US) legal system to manage a change of this magnitude with any grace.

      • Naah, they'll keep doing what they've always done: Reduce state support for families, ban sex education & reproductive healthcare, criminalise fertility treatments, & "encourage a more entrepreneurial approach" to abortion with less red tape, i.e. criminalise abortion & drive it into the backstreets. Maybe that'll increase the number of real 'Muricans who pull themselves up by the bootstraps & succeed against all the odds? Freedom!
    • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Tuesday August 20, 2024 @11:39PM (#64722544)
      This is the stock response but all it shows is a shift in values. Family used to be the first priority. Most people didn't question it. You just made the finances work. People were poorer than today throughout virtually all, if not all, of history. The idea of thinking about having kids as a lifestyle choice, like whether to get a jet ski, is a new invention. You can argue it's better this way, fine, that's an argument to be had.

      But the myth of millenials being poor is also just that. They were a bit poorer than the past few generations for years after the great recession, but have caught up.

      https://economistwritingeveryd... [economistw...eryday.com]

      Millenials have also caught up Gen X in home ownership rate at the same age

      https://www.redfin.com/news/ho... [redfin.com]

      I'm actually glad the population is headed for some decline, but a slower steady decline would be better than dropping off a cliff. Things are looking pretty rough by the time of elderly Gen-Z, unless a huge advance in technology changes everything etc.

      • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @12:35AM (#64722624)

        Back in the good old days you could count on a company being loyal to it's employees and be comfortable working there for years.

        Now both parents have to work and if you haven't seen daycare prices then you better have a seat and make sure your nitro pills are within reach.

        Take your old salary and mortgage costs and run them through the inflation calculator and then get back to me. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/c... [bls.gov]

      • People were poorer than today ...

        Socialism meant US-ians didn't need a lot of money to get an education and a job, get pregnant, get a home for the babies, stop the babies catching disease and educating the babies. Then, Reaganomics appeared and demanded someone else pay for housing subsidies, healthcare and education, because the government was giving the money to rich people. That bad habit has multiplied over 40 years and poor people can no longer help rich people and help themselves.

        ... whether to get a jet ski ...

        There no need to ask if gen. Z are getting a house:

        • Love to see the "Everything is actually better now" crowd respond to your second point about housing. Dive right in there, you "optimists" and show us all how much better things are.
      • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @04:11AM (#64722924)
        Yeah, because wealth inequality in the USA haven't changed at all. Statistically, if your feet are in the freezer & your head's in the oven, it doesn't mean you're OK. Plus nowadays, people can just about afford to live & work. People aspire to mere existence. The moment you add the time off work & expense of raising children, nay, just the cost of giving birth in the USA, it quickly heads towards poverty. Did you know that the USA, the richest country in the world, has a shocking child poverty problem & egregiously high infant mortality rates?
    • They've built bunkers in Hawaii and have private armies. They could care less what happens to us. It's not like the old days when they feared us. They're global and we're local.

      I do think they're underestimating how spiteful and destructive we are and our capacity to get a hold of nuclear weapons and keep flinging them at their bunkers until they collapse. But the way I see it is if they let civilization collapse about half of them will be killed but the other half are going to have a pretty good time a
      • They've built bunkers in Hawaii and have private armies.

        The problem with preparing to live in a post-apocalyptic shithole is that after the dust settles, you're still living in a post-apocalyptic shithole. No amount of money can change that.

        I seriously doubt the wealthy folks who are building bunkers truly believe they're actually going to ever need them. It's more likely just a case that they have too much money and can't think of anything else to splurge on. It's the ultra-wealthy equivalent of you or I impulsively buying some Black Friday crap that goes st

    • For the generation who can barely afford rent and owning a home

      If that were the problem, then those who can easily afford to buy homes would have more kids.

      They don't.

      The better off have fewer kids, and the wealthy have the least.

    • by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @01:14AM (#64722682)

      All of the developed nations have the same issue. South Korea has an implosion coming up. But even in places like the nordic countries where daycare and schools are free, and you get plenty of maternity/paternity leave, the population growth is below replacement rate - has been for decades.

      You can blame *some* of this to the current work culture - where comfortable living is no longer possible with a single income, but mostly it's a societal change, from two directions: First, kids are a lifestyle choice (as someone said), and it's no longer expected everyone to have kids. Second is that being what is viewed as "good parents" is these days much harder. Remember the 80's (or look at first season of Stranger Things). I mean, it used to be that after preschooler phase was over, kids basically roamed wherever they wanted with their bikes as long as they turned up before bedtime and visited home for food. Now, they are expected to be carried over to every activity - and there should be plenty of those. I mean, I'm glad that physical punishments are these days considered child abuse, but so are plenty of other things that used to be perfectly normal.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You mean a few getting richer and richer and most other people strugling? Well, fixing that would help, but how are you propose to do that in the country of greed?
       

      • You mean a few getting richer and richer and most other people struggling? Well, fixing that would help, but how are you propose to do that in the country of greed?

        You might want to Google "The French Revolution"

        Or sponsor "Madame la Guillotine" on Twittter/X.

    • Sweden and Finland have high social security and their birth rates are still https://www.nordicstatistics.o...

      Having kids is uncomfortable, even if you have the money. The reason why people had kids in the past was due to economical pressure and social stigma of being childless. Since these reasons are gone people now only do the absolute minimum to leave something in this world.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        The reason for having kids in the past was entirely economic: They earned the money while you made more kids,

        Today, they cost you money, and then, when older, help you spend it.

        In most 3rd world countries, child labour is still a thing. It works better if the adults die young leaving their kids for others to exploit.

        Vote Trump and make America third world again (It is easy enough that even trump could do it).

    • by RobinH ( 124750 )

      That seems obvious but every time a country makes a policy change to relieve some of the financial burden of raising kids, it never makes a difference in the birth rate.

      Something else is going on, and that something else is simply cultural. When I was growing up in the 80's it was still common to hear a young girl say she wanted to be a Mom when she grew up, and there was no stigma around saying that any more than saying she wanted to be a doctor, a nurse, or a lawyer. These days its no longer culturally

  • We need artificial wombs and in-vitro gametogenesis. The way we currently have kids is stupid. Having to repeatedly thrust ones urination organ into a concealed location on another person is dumb. Take the human element out and there's less chance of mistakes being made. The whole thing can be confusing as there are two holes in the general vicinity. If you count the belly button that's three. If you think about it, the whole protocol is complicated too. Often the other person has a headache or in certain c

  • by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @12:51AM (#64722650)

    This is directly the result of local governments making it very difficult to build new housing units. Either by making it blatantly outright impossible or putting requirements that make it impossible. The only solution is for a non-profit foundation to start acquiring land slightly away from cities and building basic shelters with free food and online/offline education/certification courses for people. I'm talking about UN style homes https://www.fastcompany.com/26... [fastcompany.com] for non drug addicts. Put an able bodied work requirement. Non-=abled bodied should be in hospital room style care. Put drug addicts in drug treatment dormitories. It's better and cheaper than having people sleep on the streets. Make that illegal since a measurably safer alternative exists.

    • This seems pretty smart to me. Hard to see it actually happening until its way too late though.

    • This is directly the result of local governments making it very difficult to build new housing units.

      Housing shortages are a local problem.

      Collapsing birthrates are a worldwide phenomenon.

    • And everyone will decry this as a fascist MAGA fever dream. Leftists have been arguing for too long that people have a right to be homeless and forced detox not only doesn't work but is another violation of their civil rights.
  • Has anyone tried making alive being affordable again? The useful, educated, house-owning, car-owning 3-children and a pet being alive. And financially solvent. Not the living in a tent in the abandoned lot near a Krogers. The only ones having children are the ones who don't understand birth control- or just can't afford it. We've already got a few billion people who are just fine with taking the Marching Morons and turning the dial up to Idiocracy. These are not the people who you WANT to save the birth rat
    • The Hungarian government is seriously encouraging baby production - it seems to be working.
    • Has anyone tried making alive being affordable again?

      That is counter-productive.

      More prosperous people have even fewer children.

      Those who have the most children are those who can least afford them.

  • Highly developed societies all have this problem, the historic records are pretty clear about this. There is an abundance of goods and resources, turning children and young adults from being useful into (very) expensive pets with dissipating sexual identities and strange behaviours. Birth rates plummet (way) below reproduction and two generations later that society has gone the way of the Dodo. What remains are strange artifacts like those ancient temples where sex was some holy high profile ritual in some

    • ... sex was some holy high-profile ritual ...

      They didn't lie about the need for orgasm, or the need for children to know that sex was something grown-ups did. They didn't pretend the need for orgasm was wrong. Sex was seen as a magical part of living, and a necessity for producing food, making slaves and protecting old people (AKA grand-parents). Aside: It also made forced-sex, a way to cheat.

      The ability to avoid pregnancy for long periods of time, is new to women and they are choosing to spend that time on themselves and being self-sufficient.

  • Many seem to think that the important cause is a tough economy. I disagree.

    Please note that US fertility rate in 2024 is 1.84. Niger has the world's highest rate of 6.73, and Taiwan the lowest of 1.09. To maintain the current population, a value of about 2.1 is required.

    In general, highly developed countries have a low fertility rate. But despite that, from the list of 223 countries and fertility rate that I looked at, with Niger at the top and Taiwan at the bottom. The USA came in position 132, i.e.
    • In my circle of friends, and am 35 so am at just the right age for the question to start seriously popping up, most of the women want children but know that they NEED to work to be able to support them. The idea of staying at home to take care of the kids while the husband makes enough money to cover everything is pretty much a distant dream for all of them.
      So it's true that women are pursuing a career before a family, but more and more am starting to think that it's not by choice but is, ironically, someth

      • I thought that the concept of housewife was mostly dead by now? It is here, and basically everyone works.
        But there is parental leave in many countries, and in many countries, but not all, available for both men and women.
        • Parental leave only covers the first 12 months for a woman, at least in the UK.

          If you go longer without work by the time the kid starts pre-school you are hounded by the powers that be to get them in full time education ASAP so you can go back to work.

          For the "father", should he be involved, which is less common these days, he gets 2 weeks.

          Thats in the UK but birthrate is dropping like a stone here too.

    • Oops! Position 132 means a little lower than the middle, not higher. I'd better learn to do division before posting next time. :( Close to the middle anyway.
    • People say economy, womens rights; a womens desire to avoid childbirth to further her success etc.

      Nobody asks about the continuing drop in male fertility.

      Its basically a mix of everything.

  • Due the the massive overpopulation of the planet it is only natural to see that the yearly skyrocket that is world pupulation will tend to level off.

    Glad to see that the Teen birthrate is on the downward trend, kids shouldnt be having kids.

  • Short-term pain (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @07:30AM (#64723254) Homepage

    A shrinking population will cause short-to-medium-term economic pain, but in the long run, it's better for the planet. The Earth cannot sustain 10 billion people all consuming the way people in developed countries do. So we either have to condemn most people to poverty, or else reduce the population, to avoid environmental catastrophe.

    There are a lot of humans on the planet. We're not going to die out any time soon because we're not reproducing.

    Instead of trying to increase the birth rate, which is extremely difficult absent draconian and dictatorial measures, we should be trying to adjust our economies to cope with a shrinking population.

    For the record, I have three adult kids... but I doubt any of them will have kids. If I were in their shoes, I also wouldn't have kids.

  • by Morpeth ( 577066 ) on Wednesday August 21, 2024 @11:15AM (#64724076)

    Whenever I see these types of articles, it's always framed as something bad -- often because it's through the lens of economics, especially consumer-capitalist systems.

    We have too many people, period. Reduced birthrates are a GOOD thing. Now, if you're talking about reduced fertility (people trying/wanting to have kids encountering problems), that's different.

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