The fertility rate in the United States fell slightly to a historic low in 2025 as fewer teenagers and young women had babies, according to federal data released Thursday.
Roughly 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. last year, a 1 percent decline from 2024, the study by the National Center for Health Statistics found. The overall fertility rate dropped to 53.1 births per 1,000 women — also a decrease of 1 percent and a historic low since the government began keeping such records, officials said.
The fertility rate of teenagers dropped notably to its own low point, down 7 percent to 11.7 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19. The teen rate has fallen 81 percent since its most recent peak in 1991, spurred by public health education, access to birth control and a decline in sexual activity by teens.
The downward trend in fertility has been a political flash point in recent years, with some conservatives expressing worry that births have fallen below the “replacement rate” at which the population remains stable between generations. But others applaud the trend, which they see as a sign that women have greater reproductive choice than they once did.
Studies show that many couples are delaying parenthood because of economic pressures, including the high costs of housing and health care and stagnant wages. The Trump administration has tried to encourage would-be parents to have children with savings accounts for newborns, discounts on medication for in-vitro fertilization and tax credits.
Brady Hamilton, the new study’s lead author and a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics — part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — said it is “extraordinary” that the rate of teenagers giving birth has fallen so starkly.
The data also showed significant decreases in the fertility rate among women in their 20s, while the rates for those in their 30s and early 40s increased.
“The declines in the age-specific fertility rates of women in their 20’s is likely related to increases in age at first marriage along with uncertainty and stress about the future,” Wendy Manning, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University, said in an email. She said that sometimes such uncertainty is not based on an “objective measure” of employment or income, “but more so the subjective indicators of stress about economics, relationships, and health.”
These concerns can affect whether a person or a couple decides to have a child in the next year, Manning said.
Another factor in the decline in overall birth rates is that people are waiting longer to have children, with the age at first birth continuing to rise in the United States, said Karen Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center and a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“There is not a lot of evidence of huge increases in the share of people who don’t want any children,” Guzzo said. “Rather, young people are putting off having children. But people can only put off having children for so long, so that’s probably why we’re seeing increases in the 30s and 40s.”
The study also showed that the overall rate of cesarean deliveries went up slightly last year. That figure has increased almost every year since 2020 and is now at its highest rate in more than a decade.
Meanwhile, the percentage of infants born “preterm” — at less than 37 weeks — remained steady.
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