U.S. fertility rates drop to record low in 2025 as births fall

A doctor performs an ultrasound scan on a pregnant woman at a hospital in Chicago, Aug. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford, File)

The U.S. fertility rate hit a record low last year, extending a nearly two-decade decline as fewer women had children and many delayed starting families, provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed on Thursday.

Fertility has been trending lower in the U.S. for nearly two decades, with the general fertility rate falling nearly 23% since 2007, according to the agency’s data.

The number of babies born in 2025 declined 1% from a year earlier to roughly 3.6 million, while the general fertility rate - the number of births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 - also slipped 1% to 53.1, the data showed.

The 2025 figures underscore a long-running shift in U.S. childbearing patterns, with declines among younger women continuing to outweigh gains at older ages.

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While fertility rates among women in their 30s and 40s have increased over the past decade, those gains have remained too modest to offset sustained declines among women under 30.

Last year, the fertility rate among women aged 25 to 29 fell about 4.4%, while the rate for women aged 30 to 34 rose about 2.7% from 2024, the data showed.

Fertility rates among teenagers also declined sharply, with the rate for those aged 18 to 19 falling 7% and the rate for younger teens aged 15 to 17 dropping 11%, both reaching record lows.

The provisional data is based on 99.95% of all birth records received and processed last year by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the CDC, as of February 3, 2026.

(Reporting by Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)