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Fertility rate drops to new record low: CDC

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by Joseph Choi - 04/09/26 2:25 PM ET

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by Joseph Choi - 04/09/26 2:25 PM ET

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The U.S. general fertility rate fell by 1 percent in 2025, reaching a new record low for another consecutive year according to latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The general fertility rate, which covers women between the ages of 15 and 44, was about 53.1 births per 1,000 females with roughly 3,606,400 recorded last year. The U.S. fertility rate has been trending downward for several decades, having fallen by 14 percent between 1990 and 2023.

“The provisional general fertility rate for the United States in 2025 was 53.1 births per 1,000 females ages 15–44, a decrease of 1% from the rate in 2024 (53.8). The rate has generally declined since 2007, decreasing by 23%,” stated the CDC’s report.

The rate of births among teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 fell by 7 percent last year, with a larger 11 percent decline among older teens aged 18 to 19.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of childless women has jumped significantly in recent years. Between 2014 and 2024, the percentage of women aged between 25 and 29 who were childless rose from about 50 percent to 63 percent.

The only demographic that saw decreases in childlessness in that same time frame were women aged between 45 and 50, indicating more women had children as they entered their late 40s.

For a population to remain stable, the total fertility rate should be around 2.1 children per woman. In 2024, this rate fell below 1.6 children per women.

Polling in recent years has indicated that the number of adults who never want to have children has grown, and that men and women plan to have fewer children than previous generations.

A Pew Research study published last year found that the number of children Americans in their 20s and 30s want to have fell to less than 2 by 2023 after having remained relatively stable between 2002 and 2012.

Another study found that just more than half of adults — 53 percent — said choosing to have children would negatively impact the country in the future.

The rising cost of living has frequently been cited as a significant contributor to falling fertility rates not just in the U.S. but across many other developed nations.

In South Korea, the country with world’s lowest fertility rate, women point to the high cost of housing and education as key reasons they’ve decided not to have children, leading the country to deploy numerous financial incentives to encourage women to have children.

In the 2025 American Family Survey from Brigham Young University, 71 percent of adults disagreed with the notion that having children was affordable for most people. Forty-three percent cited insufficient financial resources as being a barrier to having children, while only 22 percent cited a lack of personal desire.

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