A report released Wednesday (May 5) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the U.S. fertility rate in 2020 is at a record low. The number of newborns will fall for the sixth consecutive year, the lowest since 1979.
According to the CDC report, the U.S. total fertility rate (TFR) in 2020 is 1,637.5 children per 1,000 women, down 4 percent from 2019 and a record low.
The general fertility rate in 2020 is 55.8 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44, also down 4% from 2019 and another new low.
The number of births in the U.S. in 2020 is 3,605,201, down about 140,000 from 2019, which is also the lowest number of births since 1979.
The CDC says the U.S. fertility rate is very low, “below replacement level,” which means more people die than are born every day.
According to the Associated Press, some experts say the new crown epidemic is one of the reasons for the drop in newborns last year. Concerns about the outbreak and its impact on the economy may have led many couples to think having children at this time was a bad idea.
But many pregnant women actually became pregnant before the outbreak began, said Brady Hamilton, author of the report, and CDC researchers are conducting follow-up studies to better analyze why that decline occurred.
The United States used to be one of the few developed countries with high fertility rates. About 12 years ago, the average American woman gave birth to 2.1 children. But that number has been slipping, dropping to about 1.6 by 2019.
Other experts have sounded alarm bells about the declining birth rate and the impact this will have on the U.S. economy in the years ahead. In an interview on CBS’s “Morning Joe,” USC professor Dowell Myers called the phenomenon a “crisis.
He said, “We need to have enough of the working-age population to carry the burden of the elderly. They should retire, they should have all the rights, and they will live another 30 years.”
The Brookings Institution, a U.S. think tank, published an article last year that said the new crown epidemic could lead to a “massive, lasting fertility slump.” The epidemic has plunged the country into an economic recession, which economic reasoning and past evidence suggest will lead people to have fewer children.
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