April 23 (UPI) — The U.S. fertility rate grew by less than 1% — close to a record low — as 3,622,673 babies were born in 2024, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rate of 54.6 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age was slightly higher than the record low in 2023 of 54.5, according to the CDC report.
There were 26,656 more births than in 2023. Data were obtained by the National Center for Health Statistics on Feb. 4.
Births have been trending down for the past few years. Overall, the total births declined by 2% per year on average from 2015 through 2020.
The rate rose in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic when it was called the “baby bump.”
The Trump administration has been pushing for families to have more children.
Elon Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency, has said the low birth rate keeps him up at night.
“Humanity is dying,” he told Fox News last month. He has 13 children with three mothers.
The total number of births were 576,104 more than deaths in 2024: 3,046,569, according Database.earth.
The “replacement level” is where enough babies are being born that a population can keep its size from one generation to the next.
White House advisers are considering a $5,000 “baby bonus” to every American mother after she gives birth.
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” President Donald Trump said Tuesday.
Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 18 to expand access to in vitro fertilization for “making it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The president wants America to be a country where all children can safely grow up and achieve the American dream. As a mother myself, I am proud to work for a president who is taking significant action to leave a better country for the next generation.”
Leavitt became a mother at age 27 on July 10, 2024.
Vice President JD Vance said at a March for Life in late January he wants more babies in the United States of America.
Vance has three children with his wife, Usha.
The data also show a shift to older mothers giving birth.
Among women 30-34 last year, there were 95.4 births for every 1,000 women in that category. The total was 1,110,643 compared with 989,140 for those 25-29 at 91.4. Among women 45-54, there were 10,929 births.
Conversely, teen births and births among women in their early 20s declined to record lows last year.
There were 12.7 births for every 1,000 girls 15-19, which is a 3% drop from 2023. For women ages 20 to 24, there were 56.7 births for every 1,000 women. The total numbers were 1,725 for girls 10-14 and 137,020 for those 15-19,
“It’s not that people are deciding against having kids at all,” Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told NBC News. “Do I have the right partner? If I have another baby in child care, what would that do to my expenses? Does my job feel stable?”
Also women are having fewer children.
In 2024, the average woman had one to two biological children, according to the CDC report, compared with more than three in 1960.
Also, there are higher birth rates among Asian and Hispanic women, but lower among Black, White and American Indian women.
Despite a push toward more births, two-thirds of the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health has been cut, a source told CNN, affecting programs focused on abortion surveillance, contraception guidelines, IVF surveillance, pregnancy risk assessment.
The overall cesarean rate increased to 32.4% from 32.3%.
The pre-term rate, less than 37 weeks, was 10.41%, which was unchanged from the previous year. The early pre-term rate, less than 34 weeks, declined 1% to 2.72%.
The most births of 401,515 was in California, followed by 390,506 in Texas, 224,267 in Florida and 204,864 in New York.
In 2024, there were an estimated 1,038,000 abortions provided by clinicians in states without total bans, a 1% increase from 2023 and 12% from 2020, according to Guttmacher.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned Roe vs. Wade. Eight states and Washington, D.C., allow abortions at all stages of pregnancy and 28 states allow them until a certain gestational age or before fetal viability, which is usually around week 24, according to Kaiser Family Foundation.
More than 169,000 U.S. abortion patients traveled to other states in 2023, representing 16% of all abortions in states without total bans. Half as many, or 81,000, did so in 2020.
