The U.S. birth rate has now been in decline for two decades, dropping nearly 23% since 2007.
Published April 9, 2026
The U.S. birth rate has fallen to an all-time low, continuing a trend in which the number of births in the country has fallen by nearly 23 percent since 2007.
The birth rate in 2025 will be 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, down 1% from the previous year, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Experts attribute this shift to a variety of factors, from changing priorities among young women to socio-economic factors such as concerns about the cost of living and the affordability of housing and child care.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank focused on economic issues, the average cost of child care in California was about $22,000 a year. In a low cost of living state like Alabama, it cost nearly $8,000.
Alabama’s costs were lower, but the institute noted that $8,000 is equivalent to 27 weeks of full-time work for a worker earning the state’s minimum wage.
In California, it takes a minimum wage worker 33 weeks to earn enough to pay for child care alone.
Philip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, told Reuters that factors such as “bigger and tougher job market opportunities, expanded leisure options, (and) increased parenting intensity” are making “the option to have children” less desirable.
Declining birth rates have also attracted the attention of policymakers, some of whom are seeking to introduce tools to encourage young couples to have children.
President Donald Trump’s administration has pledged to adopt pronatalist policies, also known as pronatalist policies. Last year, the administration touted new guidance to increase access to IVF treatment as proof that Republicans are the “party of the parents.”
However, such measures are coupled with significant cuts in access to government health care and other social programs.
After announcing his recent fiscal year 2027 budget request, President Trump defended his $1.5 trillion military spending request while justifying the need for social spending cuts.
He proposed transferring existing federal programs to states with different resources.
President Trump said last week: “America can’t take care of child care. It has to be left to the states. We can’t take care of child care. We’re a great nation.”
“Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things can be done on a state-by-state basis. They can’t be done federally (units). There’s one thing we have to deal with: military protection. We have to protect our country. But all these little things, all these little frauds that are going on, we have to leave it to the states.”
Far-right politicians have also become obsessed with declining birth rates in Western countries, using it to promote the theory that the white majority could be “replaced” by immigrants from non-Western countries.
The number of babies born in the United States in 2025 also fell slightly, by about 1 percent, to 3.6 million.
