CDC: U.S. Birth Rate at Record Low After Pandemic Boost

Fertility rates in the United States hit a record low in 2023, according to provisional data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday. Total births last year fell two percent from 2022 to 3.59 million, “a level not seen since 1979, when about 3.4 million U.S. babies were born,” TIME reported. Brady Hamilton, a U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) demographer and lead author of the report, told the publication the rate of U.S. women of childbearing age having babies is the lowest since...