Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Thursday shows that the U.S. fertility rate fell to a record low last year, extending a decline that has continued for nearly two decades.
The downward trend also mirrors global patterns, with fewer women choosing to have children amid shifting social and economic conditions. In the United States, the general fertility rate has dropped by nearly 23% since 2007, according to the agency’s data.
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Shifting priorities among younger women including more competitive job market opportunities, a wider range of leisure options, and increasingly intensive parenting expectations are making the decision to have children less appealing, according to Phillip Levine.
The data also showed that the number of babies born in the United States in 2025 fell by 1% year-over-year to about 3.6 million. At the same time, the general fertility rate the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 also declined by 1% to 53.1.
Although fertility rates for women in their 30s and 40s have risen over the past decade, the increases have been too small to compensate for the continued and sharper declines among women under the age of 30.
Last year, the fertility rate among women aged 25 to 29 declined by about 4.4%, while the rate for women aged 30 to 34 increased by roughly 2.7% compared with 2024, according to the data.
Teenage fertility rates also fell sharply, with births among those aged 18 to 19 dropping by 7% and those aged 15 to 17 declining by 11%, both reaching record lows.
The provisional figures are based on 99.95% of all birth records received and processed last year by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of February 3, 2026.
