The United States’s fertility rate fell to a new record low in 2025, extending a nearly two-decade trend, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Thursday.
The fertility rate, or the number of births per 1,000 childbearing age women, dropped to 53.1 in 2025, down from 53.8 in 2024.
The total number of births also fell by 1% last year to just 3,606,400, according to the National Center for Health Statistics within the CDC. The data released Thursday is provisional.
Fertility rates and birth rates are part of how demographers measure population health, along with death rates and net immigration.
The total fertility rate, a measure of the number of births the average woman will have over her lifetime, fell to a record low of 1.57, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.
The fertility rate has been on a steady decline since 2007 during the Great Recession, leading many demographers to suggest that economic uncertainty and rising costs of living have contributed to a trend of smaller family sizes.
The Agriculture Department estimated last year that it costs more than $322,000 to raise an average child from birth to age 18.
Another possible reason for the declining fertility rate is that women are delaying childbirth, meaning that they are not biologically able to have as many children before the onset of menopause.
The CDC report indicates that the birth rate for women between the ages of 30 and 34 rose by nearly 3 percentage points, from 93.7 in 2024 to 96.2 in 2025. The trend was similar for women between 35 and 39, increasing by nearly a percentage point year-over-year.
By contrast, teenage pregnancy rates plummeted by 7% from 2024. Teen pregnancy rates have dropped by 81% since peaking in 1991.
Reversing the trend of declining birth rates has been a central focus of the Trump administration’s pro-family agenda.
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Last year, the Trump administration launched tax-advantaged savings accounts for babies born between January 2025 and December 2028 in part to incentivize births. Increasing access to in vitro fertilization and other artificial reproductive technologies by lowering the costs of prescription medications has also been a goal for the administration.
Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the total U.S. population will begin shrinking by 2056 due to decreasing birth rates if current trends continue for the next 30 years. CBO analysts estimated that the population would increase from 349 million in 2026 to 364 million in 2056, but eventually plateau and begin to decline.
