The U.S. birthrate has dropped to its lowest point in more than 100 years, triggering concerns about the nation’s economic future with a lack of fresh blood to replenish an aging workforce.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s provisional analysis of birth certificates tallied nearly 3.6 million newborns last year, down 2% from 2022. The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reported Thursday that the general fertility rate among women of childbearing age was 54.4 births per 1,000, down 3% from 2022.
That beats the previous low from 2020, when statistics showed 56 births for every 1,000 women ages 15 to 44. It’s also consistent with an average annual decline of 2% in the birthrate before the pandemic, reversing a COVID-19 “baby bump” of slight increases in 2021 and 2022.
Health and finance experts cited surging food and housing prices as reasons fewer women gave birth last year. Some noted that downward population trends have impacted the nation’s supply of working-age adults, which federal demographers have said cannot grow by the end of this century without higher immigration numbers.
“People generally don’t have kids when they are concerned about being able to afford basic necessities like food and housing, and I’m sure inflation has made these economic factors even more acute,” said Alison Gemmill, a perinatal epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Federal demographers have predicted for the first time that the U.S. population will decline. Economists say that will stunt economic growth at every level as fewer young people are available to apply for college, enter the workforce and pay taxes in coming decades.
“Fewer people working means less of a base to fund Social Security benefits,” said Kandice Kapinos, a senior economist at the Rand Corp. “With an aging population, if we have more people receiving those benefits relative to people paying into the system, that is a problem.”
The Census Bureau estimated in November that COVID-19 deaths, falling birthrates and an aging citizenry will drive down the nation’s population from an expected peak of nearly 370 million residents in 2080 to 360 million by 2100, barring increased immigration.
Using current immigration levels, the federal agency projects that the share of residents 65 and older will outnumber those younger than 18 for the first time by 2029. By 2100, 29.1% of the population will be 65 or older, compared with 16.4% younger than 18.
As the fertility rate declines, the labor market faces a shrinking talent pool. According to the CDC, the birthrate needed to replenish the existing population has been “consistently below replacement since 2007.” Forbes estimates that 10,000 baby boomers retire daily.
Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of Idaho-based jobs board RedBalloon, said this aging talent pool has fueled “one of the most difficult labor markets in our lifetimes” for private employers this year, with younger generations slower to enter the workforce.
“It’s created an unwinnable situation for employers and is driving up wages and costs,” Mr. Crapuchettes said. “Many employers are throwing up the white flag and simply abandoning hiring and growth plans.”
Higher education watchers say the CDC report signals a growing revenue crisis for the nation’s four-year colleges. Private and public institutions were already bracing for a “demographic cliff” of applications starting in 2026 because families had fewer children after the Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009.
“Many small colleges have already been forced to close for lack of students,” said Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars and a former associate provost at Boston University. “That trend will accelerate, and the effect will be dramatic within the next 20 years.”
The CDC’s Brady Hamilton, a co-author of Thursday’s report, emphasized a more positive trend. He pointed out that a 3% drop in the birthrate for ages 15 to 19 led the way last year as births fell across most racial and ethnic groups.
That followed a 2% decline in that age group from 2021 to 2022 and an average annual drop of 7% from 2007 through 2022.
“The decline in teenage births is important since it is known that teenagers suffer more complications from pregnancy and teenager pregnancy is associated with poor social, economic, and health outcomes for mother and child,” Mr. Hamilton told The Times. “However, we do not know, as yet, what caused the decline in births.”
Before the pandemic, the CDC said, birthrates had risen only for women in their 30s and 40s, reflecting a long-standing trend of women attending college and starting careers before forming families. That changed last year as birthrates fell for all women younger than 40 and remained unchanged for those in their 40s.
The CDC’s childbirth data goes back to 1920.
Reached for comment, some social scientists said the report confirms that more women see childbirth as a luxury they cannot afford. They pointed out that money is the main reason people delay having children.
“I think what you’re seeing is a lot of women waiting to have children until they have more caretaking resources,” said Mary Ziegler, a leading historian of reproductive issues and law professor at the University of California, Davis. “The flexibility of working from home during the pandemic probably contributed to more people deciding to have children. Absent that, most people can’t afford the loss of income.”
Ms. Ziegler cited remote work policies and government relief programs to explain the two-year baby bump during COVID-19 restrictions, when women who delayed pregnancies early in the pandemic changed their minds.
Michael New, a professor of social research at the Catholic University of America, said the CDC report also confirms that the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling allowing states to restrict abortion did not lead to more births.
He noted that the CDC report showed the number of births in Texas and Mississippi, which implemented sweeping abortion restrictions after the ruling, fell by less than half a percentage point, well below the national average.
“This shows that the pro-life laws likely had an impact but that broader trends swamped the impact of the strong pro-life laws that were enacted in many states after Dobbs,” Mr. New said.