by Since the Trump government renewed its focus on falling birth rates in the United States, new data from the centers for the control and prevention of diseases indicate that births were quite stable in 2024 and increased by 1% in the previous year.
According to a CDC report published on Wednesday, there were 3,622,673 births in the United States last year. Overall, the number of births from 2015 to 2020 took on average by 2% per year and fluctuated in the years after the report.
The report also estimated the birth rate in women between the ages of 15 and 44, especially as the fertility rate. The rate decreased from 2014 to 2020 and then fluctuated until 2024. The fertility rate last year was 54.6 births per 1,000 women, as the report was determined – an increase of 0.2% compared to 2023.
Brady Hamilton, the main author of the report and a CDC statistician, said the data marked “a continuation of the general downward trend in births to young people and the upward trend for births to older women who have been seen in the past three decades.” However, he said that the CDC could not speak to the reasons behind the trend.
Sociologists who examined the CDC data stated that they largely reflect women who are late to have children in the twenties who finally decided in the thirties and 40s. Birth rates rose in women between the ages of 25 and 44 last year, but decreased by teenagers and under 25 years.
“It is not the case that people decide to have children at all,” said Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
She rather said that people ask themselves: “Do I have the right partner? When I have another baby in childcare, what would that do with my editions? Does my job feel stable?”
The parents could also force the same concerns to have fewer children, said Guzzo. According to the CDC report, the average woman in 2024 had one to two biological children compared to more than three in 1960.
The general fertility rate in the United States has decreased since 2007 – a pattern sociologist expected to continue despite the nominal increase last year.
While the economy has improved in general since the “big recession”, many people still have the feeling that their financial position has become better, said Sarah Hayford, director of the Institute for Population Research at Ohio State University.
“In many places, the real estate market is really a challenge, and that is something that many people want to have used in front of their children,” she said.
Guzzo said that the tariffs of the Trump government for imported goods and the reduction of federal programs that support women and children could contribute to a climate of women who delayed children or not to decide.
In turn, the Trump government complained about the decline in birth rates.
Vice President JD Vance called for “more babies in the United States of America” in January. And in the same month, transport secretary Sean Duffy said that municipalities should be prioritized for the federal government’s means of transport.
President Donald Trump named himself in March at an event of the White House as “President of the fertilization president”. His managing director, to expand access to the in -vitro fertilization, underlines “the importance of family education” and demands “to love and long for longing mothers and fathers to have children”.
The technical billionaire Elon Musk, a high -ranking Trump consultant, also described the falling birth rates as a danger to the survival of mankind. According to the CDC report, the birth rate in the United States is far below what is called the “replacement level”, whereby enough babies are born so that one population can keep their size from one generation to the next.
The New York Times reported on Monday that the White House rejects proposals for incentives for the birth, including a cash bonus of 5,000 US dollars for mothers after delivery. However, sociologists said that these efforts would probably not reverse the falling birth rates. A 2021 study on “Baby Bonus” in South Korea showed that most of the money went to women who had a child, regardless of incentive.
“You can’t just turn a change and change the birth rate,” said Julia Strasser, deputy research professor at the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at George Washington University.
“The economic requirements – not only for babies, but also to raise babies – do not really help to support this,” she added.
Sociologists generally agreed that low fertility or birth rates are not inherent problem. In fact, they said that the decline in the birth rates of teenagers was a positive trend.
“Good news is when people can avoid children in times of their lives in which they would say themselves:” This is not the right time, “said Guzzo.
This article was originally published on nbcnews.com
