WASHINGTON, May 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) —The American birth rate fell for the sixth consecutive year in 2020, with the lowest number of babies born since 1979, according to a new report.
Some 3.6 million babies were born in the US in 2020 – marking a 4% decline from the year before, found the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.
The slump was seen across all recorded ethnicities and origins, according to the findings.
The national picture mirrors a decline in births seen worldwide, a trend some experts say has been accelerated by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
In the CDC report, demographers examined the country’s general fertility rate, which compares the number of live births with the number of women considered to be of childbearing age – between 15 and 44 years old.
In 2020, the general fertility rate in the US was about 56 births per 1,000 women – the lowest rate on record and about half of what it was in the early 1960s.
The decline in birth rates was seen across all measured racial and ethnic groups. Births dropped by 4% among white, black and Latina women, 9% for Asian women, 3% for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders and 7% for Native American and Alaska native women.
Experts say the country’s tumbling birth rate is closely linked to the average age of American mothers. Women are becoming mothers later in life – a phenomenon tied to increases in educational attainment, growing labour force participation and delays in marriage, according to the Pew Research Center. The average age of mothers at first birth is 27, up from 23 in 2010, recent CDC data has found.
This changing picture of motherhood has been driven in part by declines in pregnancy among teenagers. The birth rates among teenagers aged 15-19 had the steepest decline of all age groups: down by 8% in 2020 to around 15 births per 1,000 females.
The National Center for Health Statistics has said it is too early to determine whether the Covid-19 pandemic had a significant effect on birth rates because this year’s data is in keeping with past trends. But initial research suggests that Covid-19 may have compounded existing patterns.
In a June 2020 study by the Guttmacher Institute, one in three US women said that because of Covid-19, they were likely to delay having children or have fewer children altogether. And researchers from the Brookings Institution – who predicted a “large, lasting baby bust” due to Covid-19 – have suggested that the anxiety and economic uncertainty wrought by the pandemic will further depress birth rates going forward.
Data from the CDC shows births falling most sharply toward the end of last year when babies conceived at the start of the pandemic would have been born. — NNN-AGENCIES