U.S. Birthrate Hits Record Low
By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News
(Worthy News) – The United States hit a record low birthrate amid broader concerns over the economy, U.S. health authorities revealed Wednesday.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention’s National Center for Health said birth rates declined for nearly all age groups in 2019. They did increase slightly for women in their early 40s, they added.
Last year about 3.75 million babies were born in the U.S. — down 1 percent from the previous year, the report showed. And, the general fertility rate fell 2 percent to 58.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44.
The number of children born to an individual woman moved slightly below the total from the year before 1.7. The number of births needed to maintain a population without immigration is 2.1 births per woman, according to experts.
It is the lowest fertility level since the government began tracking the figure in 1909.
The reluctance among millennials (those born between roughly 1981 and 1996) to have children has been linked to economic concerns and broader access to contraceptives.
Younger and unmarried women are having fewer babies, and more women are delaying marriage as they start their careers after college. University of Notre Dame researchers reportedly said conceptions dropped ahead of the last three recessions, beginning with the recessions of the early 1990s, the early 2000s, and the Great Recession from 2008 to 2009.
The U.S. currently faces unemployment levels of the Great Depression of the 1930s, with one in 6 Americans of working age out of a job as the coronavirus pandemic essentially shut down the economy.
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