Along with health, economic, and political uncertainties in 2020 came a historically low birth rate. The total fertility rate for women in the United States was 1,637.5 births per 1,000 women, a 42-year low. This rate is 4% lower than the previous year, and the decline appeared across all age groups and ethnicities. It may be easy to brush this data off as a possible side effect of the pandemic, but the fertility rate has been trending downward for some time. And it does not bode well for the U.S.

The replacement level fertility rate sits at roughly 2.1%. This means a group of 1,000 women would need to have a total of 2,100 babies in order to replace their generation. The country has been below this number for decades. The trend of having fewer kids or no kids at all is due to many factors, none of which will be changing soon.