U.S. birth rate drops to record low, ending pandemic uptick [View all]
Source: CBS News
April 25, 2024 / 12:01 AM EDT
The pace of babies born each year in the U.S. has slowed to a new record low, according to an analysis of 2023 birth certificate data published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last year's slowdown marks an official end to the uptick in new babies that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 3,591,328 babies were born in the U.S. in 2023, down 2% from the 3,667,758 born in 2022.
This is on par with annual declines seen before the pandemic, the report said, which averaged around 2% fewer babies each year.
There were already signs in the year before that a pandemic surge in births was coming to an end. There were slightly fewer babies born in 2022 compared to 2021, though agency officials said at the time that this drop was not large enough to be considered a statistically significant decline.
"Last year, the difference was very small. This year, it's something on the order of 74,000 or thereabouts. So it's fairly large," the CDC's Brady Hamilton, one of the report's authors, told CBS News.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-birth-rate-drops-record-low-2023-after-pandemic-uptick/
Link to CDC/National Center for Health Statistics REPORT (PDF) - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf
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