US birth rate falls to 32-year low despite rebounding economy

The U.S. saw the birth of 3.788 million babies in 2018, the lowest since 1986, according to a government report based on over 99 percent of U.S. birth records. The report by National Center for Health Statistics shows that the falling birth rate is a trend continuing in the U.S. for the past four years.

The trend is counterintuitive given the fact that a rebounding U.S. economy should positively impact America's birth rates, say some experts as reported in the AP News. In fact, America's birth rates fell to a record low last year for women in their teens and 20s says the report.

The fertility rate of 1.7 births per U.S. woman also fell 2 percent, meaning the current generation isn't making enough babies to replace itself. The fertility rate is a hypothetical estimate based on lifetime projections of age-specific birth rates.

Whether more U.S. women are postponing motherhood or forgoing it entirely isn't yet clear. If trends continue, experts said, the U.S. can expect labor shortages including in elder care when aging baby boomers need the most support.

"I keep expecting to see the birth rates go up and then they don't," said demographer Kenneth M. Johnson of University of New Hampshire's Carsey School of Public Policy.

He estimates 5.7 million babies would have been born in the past decade if fertility rates hadn't fallen from pre-recession levels.

"That's a lot of empty kindergarten rooms," said Johnson, who wasn't involved in the report.

Other experts are not concerned, predicting today's young women will catch up with childbearing later in their lives. The only two groups with slightly higher birth rates in 2018 were women in their late 30s and those in their early 40s.

"Our fertility rates are still quite high for a wealthy nation," said Caroline Sten Hartnett, a demographer at the University of South Carolina.

American women are starting families sooner than most other developed nations, according to other research. Other countries are seeing similar declines in birth rates. Young Americans still want to have children, but they don't feel stable enough to have them yet, said Karen Benjamin Guzzo, who studies families at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

The U.S. could do more to encourage childbearing with parental leave, preschool expansion and child care subsidies and other policies aimed at helping young adults struggling with student loan debt and housing costs, Guzzo said.

Births were down across racial groups, with small declines for Hispanics, whites, blacks and Asians. The number of babies born to native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders was stable.

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