US fertility rates slump by 2% in a year to lowest on record, with 1.62 births per woman in 2023: Experts say focus on careers and access to contraception is behind the trend

New data revealed the number of babies born in the United States reached the lowest on record as experts say women are putting off having children and growing concerns over reproductive healthcare.

A little under 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, a 2 percent decline from the year before, according to provisional statistics released the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. births were slipping for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, then dropped 4 percent from 2019 to 2020. They ticked up for two straight years after that, an increase experts attributed, in part, to pregnancies that couples had put off amid the pandemic's early days.

The numbers released Thursday are based on more than 99.9 percent of the birth certificates filed in 2023, but they are provisional and the final birth count can change as they are finalized.

There could be an adjustment to the 2023 data, but it won't be enough to erase the 'sizeable' decline seen in the provisional numbers, said the CDC's Brady Hamilton, the new report's first author.

A little under 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, a 2 percent decline from the year before, according to provisional statistics

'The 2023 numbers seem to indicate that bump is over and we're back to the trends we were in before,' said Nicholas Mark, a University of Wisconsin researcher who studies how social policy and other factors influence health and fertility.

Birth rates have long been falling for teenagers and younger women, but rising for women in their 30s and 40s - a reflection of women pursuing education and careers before trying to start families, experts said. 

Mark called that development surprising and said 'there's some evidence that not just postponement is going on.' 

CDC data shows in 2007 the total U.S. fertility rate was 2.12 births per woman, the 2023 rate of 1.62 shows a steady decline.  

'People are making rather reasoned decisions about whether or not to have a child at all,' Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told The Wall Street Journal. 

'More often than not, I think what they're deciding is 'Yes, I'd like to have children, but not yet.' 

An analysis published in the prestigious Lancet journal, estimated the average birth rate in America is predicted to fall to 1.53 by 2050 and by 2100 reach 1.45. 

The concern is that this figure is way below the replacement level of 2.1 children — the number each woman would need to have, on average, to replace both parents, and maintain the economic climate. 

Some women are choosing to have children later in life and instead focus on their careers during their younger years.

As fertility is linked to age, this can lead to some women never having children or fewer than they might originally have planned.

Experts have previously warned that some are prioritizing careers over families, which they say has put the country on an irreversible path to economic decline.

Many millennials also say they do not want to have children.

Rising cost-of-living pressures, especially the price of childcare, is another factor that puts a dampener on couples having children or deciding to have multiple.

America's first over-the-counter birth control pill became available in March.

Some women are choosing to have children later in life and use contraception

Experts have wondered how births might be affected by the June 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed states to ban or restrict abortion. Experts estimate that nearly half of pregnancies are unintended, so limits to abortion access could affect the number of births.

The new report indicates that the decision didn't lead to a national increase in births, but the researchers didn't analyze birth trends in individual states or dissect data among all demographic groups.

The new data does raise the possibility of an impact on teens. The U.S. teen birth rate has been falling decades, but the decline has been less dramatic in recent years, and the drop seems to have stopped for teen girls ages 15 to 17. 

'That could be Dobbs,' said Dr. John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health and pediatrics. Or it could be related to changes in sex education or access to contraception, he added.

Whatever the case, the flattening of birth rates for high school students is worrisome and indicates that 'whatever we're doing for kids in middle and high school is faltering,' Santelli said.