by Leo Hohmann, Leo Hohmann:
The latest federal data from the Centers for Disease Control shows that the fertility rate among U.S. women plummeted to just 1.6 births per woman in 2023.
This is the lowest recorded birth rate since the U.S. government began keeping such statistics in the 1930s. But why? We’ll break it down.
The drop-off in fertility rates for white women fell some 3% from the previous year and stands even lower than the national average. The fertility rate is an estimate of the number of babies a woman would normally have in her lifetime. A rate of 2.1 births per woman is needed for a generation to replace itself. We are not even close to that. And all of Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Russia are in similar free fall. India, the African nations and a few countries in the Middle East are pretty much the only ones experiencing growing populations.