In the US, the number of births went down last year after going up during and after the pandemic. The U.S. had about 3.6 million babies born last year, which is less than seventy thousand babies less than the year before. It was the lowest number of babies born in a single year since 1979.
Even a decade before the pandemic, births were going down in the US. But soon after the pandemic, there was a big rise in babies, which experts say was due to people who didn’t want to have babies during the pandemic but were ready when things got better.
Stats show that women over forty have had more babies, while women younger than forty have had fewer babies. This is because women want to start and build a job before having a family, according to experts. It was less common for women of all ages to give birth last year.
Many people are afraid about how the laws being decided in different states and the overturning of Roe v. Wade will affect the number of births. According to experts, almost half of all births in the country are unplanned. If these abortion restrictions are put in place, the number of babies being born could slowly go down.
Other numbers show that the number of cesarean births rose by more than 30% last year, and many experts say they think these procedures are done more often than they are medically necessary.
It was also one of the few places where the US had a stable enough birth rate to replace its population, but it began to drop last year.
