The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and a new report shows that another drop in births in 2023 brought the rate down to the lowest it’s been in more than a century.

There were about 3.6 million babies born in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

After a steep plunge in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fertility rate has fluctuated. But the 3% drop between 2022 and 2023 brought the rate just below the previous low from 2020, which was 56 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age.

  • @WillardHerman
    link
    247 months ago

    I don’t know who this would be bad news for.

    • AmbiguousProps
      link
      fedilink
      English
      177 months ago

      It’s bad news for the wealthy because it means they’ll have less labor to exploit

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        37 months ago

        Well if they wanted people to have kids perhaps they should have helped make this country one that’s worth bringing kids into.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      87 months ago

      Unfortunately because the world runs on speculative investment, a smaller birthrate means less investment in child care, making it harder to find babysitters and daycares

      Japan is already suffering from this, the birthrates are incredibly low but the daycares are packed because nobody is paying daycare workers enough, and nobody is investing enough to build new ones.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        17 months ago

        That’s bullshit I believe, because if more babies are born, sure there are more babysitters, but again, more babies. So it will even out and make no difference.

    • Jimmybander
      link
      fedilink
      77 months ago

      Good news for my kids. Less scarcity for them. This is what the world needs. Less kids. Everywhere.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        17 months ago

        You have it backwatds, there will not be the same quantity of stuff divided by fewer people. There will be less of everything to begin with.

      • @iopq
        link
        17 months ago

        You mean more older people to support for each worker, so higher taxes on workers

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          47 months ago

          That’s just fearmongering. We have enough shit to help everyone already, and we are automating jobs at a very high rate, to the point that a lot of jobs are literal unneeded bullshit.

          If anything, fewer workers always meant more worker power, better organizing, higher wages, etc. Look at what happened when the oligarchic idiots got a whole generation killed in WWI. Labour won big after, since labour was scarce, while capital was not.

    • Flying Squid
      link
      67 months ago

      It’s bad news for people in a few decades who will need younger people to care for them in their old age.

      It’s good news, however, for the planet.

    • @Asclepiaz
      link
      27 months ago

      If you happen to own a human meat grinder you may consider this bad news I suppose.