Why Has the Birth Rate in the United States Fallen to the Lowest Level Ever Recorded?

The birth rate in the United States just keeps setting one dismal record after another.  In fact, according to the CDC it just dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.  We are literally not even replacing ourselves, and that has all sorts of implications for our future.  For instance, if we don’t produce enough offspring, there simply will not be enough workers to support Social Security and Medicare and those programs will inevitably collapse.  A society with lots of old people and relatively few young people will result in poverty for everyone.  So the truth is that the birth rate crisis is going to ultimately affect all of us.

In order for the population of our nation to remain perfectly stable, women need to be giving birth to an average of 2.1 children because not all children make it to adulthood.

Sadly, the birth rate in the United States is now way below replacement level.

The CDC just announced that the birth rate in the U.S. fell below 1.6 children per woman in 2024…

The United States’ total fertility rate fell to a record low in 2024, dipping below 1.6 children per woman, according to new federal data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This marks a significant demographic milestone for a country that once stood apart among developed nations for maintaining a replacement-level birth rate of around 2.1 children per woman.

Our society is not growing.

Our society is dying.

If you go back to the early 1960s, our birth rate was hovering around 3.5 children per woman, but it has been on a downward trend ever since…

In the early 1960s, the U.S. total fertility rate was around 3.5, but plummeted to 1.7 by 1976 after the Baby Boom ended. It gradually rose to 2.1 in 2007 before falling again, aside from a 2014 uptick. The rate in 2023 was 1.621 but inched down in 2024 to 1.599, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

So what has caused such a dramatic shift?

According to CBS News, on average U.S. women are waiting longer to have children, and many are choosing never to have children at all…

The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all.

I think that it is important to also point out that many couples simply can’t have children today.

Infertility has been steadily rising among women, and among men sperm counts have been falling precipitously since the 1970s.

If we do not do something about this, eventually most males will simply be unable to produce offspring at all.

For couples that are able to produce babies, many are putting off parenthood due to the rising cost of living.

Most Americans are just barely scraping by from month to month these days, and having a kid is really expensive.

In fact, it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise a single child to adulthood in the United States…

Raising a child from birth to age 18 in the United States can cost between $200,000 and $310,000, according to some sources. It is even pricier in some states, including Massachusetts, where families can spend up to $650,000.

Child care is a huge part of this: parents can expect to pay anywhere from $3,000 to $21,000 annually on child care.

When I was growing up, my father worked and my mother stayed home with the kids.

But that is very rare in America today.

Most women are working, and that is another reason why the birth rate has been falling.  It is just very difficult to have a full-time career and to be a full-time mother…

This “shift” includes the fact that most women in high-income countries now work, while it was previously “reasonable to consider having children as a widespread priority for women.”

But they do not attribute this to “whether women work at all after they are married or have had their first child” but rather “the tension between a lifetime career and the way motherhood interrupts or alters that lifetime career progression.”

But even women that don’t work are having fewer children.

So how do we explain that?

The answer is actually very simple.

Throughout human history, children have been considered to be a blessing to be cherished, but our culture regards them as a burden to be avoided.

We have a very “me-centered” culture, and we now prioritize ourselves over everything else.

The idea of “making sacrifices” for your family and your children is anathema in this day and age.

Young people are frequently told that they will “ruin their lives” if they get married too early or have children too early.

Our society encourages them to run around and have lots of fun before they “settle down”.

Of course many are choosing not to “settle down” at all.

Our movies, our television shows and our music glorify the single lifestyle.  As a result, a higher percentage of Americans are single than ever before.

But has that made us happier?

No, we have a raging loneliness epidemic in this country that I have written about on numerous occasions.

We were designed to love and be loved, and the family unit has always been the basic building block of society all throughout human history.

There is one last cause of our birth rate crisis that I wanted to mention.

If we stopped aborting a million babies a year, that would completely solve our birth rate crisis right there.

Of course that isn’t going to happen, and that is extremely unfortunate.

Given enough time, if we stay on the road that we are currently on it would lead to demographic collapse…

If trends continue on their present path, demographers warn, there won’t be enough people to work to support society. The extreme labor shortages would lead to stagnation, poverty, and ultimately — in the most dire scenarios — the collapse of civilization itself.

Of course I don’t believe that our society actually has enough time left for such a scenario to play out.

We are committing societal suicide in so many other ways, and the clock is ticking.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

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