THE number of births in the United States fell by 2 per cent in 2023 from the previous year, driven in part by a marked birth rate decline among older teenagers and women aged 20 to 24, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Thursday (Apr 25).

The number of births in the US fell to 3,591,328 in 2023 from 3,667,758 the year prior, based on provisional National Centers for Health Statistics (NCHS) data from the US CDC.

The decline puts the US back on trend with the 2 per cent decline seen in 2015 to 2020. In 2021, births rose 1 per cent. The birth rate in 2022 was flat with the prior year.

Among women aged 25 to 34 years, who accounted for more than two million births in 2023, the birth rate fell about 2.5 per cent, while births among women aged 20 to 24 years fell by 4 per cent to a record low rate.

US birth rates for teenagers aged 18 to 19 years fell 3 per cent, also a record low, while the rate among teenagers aged 15 to 17 years was flat. Teen births have been falling since 2007.

“The decline in (teenage) birth rates has been quite phenomenal,” Dr Brady Hamilton, co-author of the report, said.

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“For younger teens, it still has more to go in terms of decline,” he said. “These are young women who are in the process of acquiring an education and preparing for the future.”

Births declined for all races except Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women, for whom the number of births was basically flat. Black and Native American women experienced the largest birth declines, by 4 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively.

For women of Hispanic origin, births rose by 1 per cent.

There was an uptick in deliveries by cesarean section last year, tracking with the rising average age of mothers, co-author Michelle Osterman, a health statistician at NCHS said.

The rate of infants delivered by cesarean section rose moderately for the fourth consecutive year to 32.4 per cent, the highest since 2013, up from 32.1 per cent in 2022, the report said. “We do know that older women tend to more have difficulties during delivering so it could be influenced by the increase in maternal age,” said Osterman. “And ‘low-risk’ (cesarean) doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not medically significant.” REUTERS