Last year, the number of births in the United States went down after going up during and after the pandemic. About 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. last year, which is less than seventy thousand babies less than the year before. It was the lowest number of births in a single year since 1979.
Even ten years before the pandemic, births were going down in the US. But soon after the pandemic, there was a big rise in babies, which experts say was due to people who didn’t want to have babies during the pandemic but were ready when things got better.
Statistics show that women over forty have had more babies, while women younger than forty have had fewer babies. The reason for this, according to experts, is that women want to start and build a job before having a family. Across all age groups, the number of births to women last year went down.
A lot of people are afraid about how the laws being decided in different states and the overturning of Roe v. Wade will affect the number of births. Experts say that almost half of all births in the country are unplanned. If these abortion restrictions are put in place, the number of babies being born could slowly go down.
Other statistics show that the number of cesarean births rose by more than 30% last year. Many experts agree that c-sections are being done more often than they are medically necessary.
One of the few countries with a stable enough birth rate to keep up with replacing people was the United States. But last year, it began to fall.