US fertility rates drop to record low in 2025 as births fall
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Fertility rate among younger women below 30 has seen rapid declines in recent years.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: UNSPLASH
The US fertility rate hit a record low in 2025, extending a nearly two-decade decline as fewer women had children and many delayed starting families, provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on April 9.
Fertility has been trending lower in the US for nearly two decades, with the general fertility rate falling nearly 23 per cent since 2007, according to the agency’s data.
The number of babies born in 2025 declined 1 per cent from 2024 to roughly 3.6 million, while the general fertility rate – the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 - also slipped 1 per cent to 53.1, the data showed.
The 2025 figures underscore a long-running shift in US childbearing patterns, with declines among younger women continuing to outweigh gains at older ages.
While fertility rates among women in their 30s and 40s have increased over the past decade, those gains have remained too modest to offset sustained declines among women under 30.
In 2025, the fertility rate among women aged 25 to 29 fell about 4.4 per cent, while the rate for women aged 30 to 34 rose about 2.7 per cent from 2024, the data showed.
Fertility rates among teenagers also declined sharply, with the rate for those aged 18 to 19 falling 7 per cent and the rate for younger teens aged 15 to 17 dropping 11 per cent, both reaching record lows.
The provisional data is based on 99.95 per cent of all birth records received and processed in 2025 by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the CDC, as at Feb 3, 2026.
