US fertility rate dropped to lowest in a century as US births dipped in 2023

The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and a new report shows that another drop in births in 2023 brought the rate down to the lowest it’s been in more than a century.

There were about 3.6 million babies born in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

After a steep plunge in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fertility rate has fluctuated. But the 3% drop between 2022 and 2023 brought the rate just below the previous low from 2020, which was 56 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age.

Infernalism,

We noticed the dropping fertility rate as far back as 1935. The US government noted, with horror, that the fertility rate had dropped in 100 years from 7.0 to 2.1.

Since then, we’ve been steadily dropping, augmenting our fertility rate with increased immigration. But, that’s a short term solution, as immigrants usually drop from high-count families to 1 or 2 kids within two generations.

Simply put, kids are an expensive hobby with no financial upside in an industrial society.

And with every current generation, it’s going to get smaller and smaller until, within 40 or 50 years, there just won’t be enough workers/consumers to maintain the capitalist/economic system of most of the industrialized world.

Can’t wait to see what happens then.

NotMyOldRedditName,

I feel like this isn’t the right term to use for something like this.

When I hear fertility rate, I think, capability of having babies. How many people are infertile due to whatever reason, thus limiting our ability to have more children.

This should just be birth rate?

skuzz,

Good call-out. Further down the article they start using the term birth rate. Just another corporate-owned cable news network going for clickbaity headlines instead of reporting information.

WalnutLum,

I’m always reminded of this article when I see news like this:

“Japan: The Harbinger State”

Lesrid,

Very cool to see a paper on something I’ve suspected/believed since 06.

catloaf,

Yup. I want kids, but I can’t in good conscience make a baby in this world.

But I’m single so it’s not like my choice is currently making a difference anyway.

apfelwoiSchoppen,
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar
  1. It is expensive AF to have a baby.
  2. It is expensive and difficult to find care for a baby while working full time or two or three jobs.
  3. Climate chaos is here.
  4. 10 mega corps run the US and believe we are all expendable.
  5. Our reproductive rights are being stripped.

Why anyone of us chooses to have a baby is becoming more difficult to understand.

PrincessLeiasCat,

Very well said.

CeeBee,

Didn’t forget that fertility rates have dropped by 50% worldwide.

maynarkh,

And the 10 megacorps are actually owned by the same people.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

People don’t want to bring babies into an unsafe world … who’d a thunk it?

Melkath,

It's almost like when your slave waging to extreme income tax to fund a genocide, you fear your child slave waging to extreme income tax to be genocided.

WillardHerman,
@WillardHerman@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t know who this would be bad news for.

match,
@match@pawb.social avatar

bosses in 2039

card797,

Good news for my kids. Less scarcity for them. This is what the world needs. Less kids. Everywhere.

iopq,

You mean more older people to support for each worker, so higher taxes on workers

maynarkh,

That’s just fearmongering. We have enough shit to help everyone already, and we are automating jobs at a very high rate, to the point that a lot of jobs are literal unneeded bullshit.

If anything, fewer workers always meant more worker power, better organizing, higher wages, etc. Look at what happened when the oligarchic idiots got a whole generation killed in WWI. Labour won big after, since labour was scarce, while capital was not.

interdimensionalmeme,

You have it backwatds, there will not be the same quantity of stuff divided by fewer people. There will be less of everything to begin with.

gandalf_der_12te,

Explain: Why would there be fewer crops, and fewer minerals?

AmbiguousProps,

It’s bad news for the wealthy because it means they’ll have less labor to exploit

jaspersgroove,

Well if they wanted people to have kids perhaps they should have helped make this country one that’s worth bringing kids into.

NoneOfUrBusiness,

I mean you can ask Japan and Korea about that.

Hint: The answer is everyone.

Asclepiaz,

If you happen to own a human meat grinder you may consider this bad news I suppose.

WalnutLum,

Unfortunately because the world runs on speculative investment, a smaller birthrate means less investment in child care, making it harder to find babysitters and daycares

Japan is already suffering from this, the birthrates are incredibly low but the daycares are packed because nobody is paying daycare workers enough, and nobody is investing enough to build new ones.

greywolf0x1,

and Japan is incredibly anti-immigration

gandalf_der_12te,

That’s bullshit I believe, because if more babies are born, sure there are more babysitters, but again, more babies. So it will even out and make no difference.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

It’s bad news for people in a few decades who will need younger people to care for them in their old age.

It’s good news, however, for the planet.

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