American women are still having too few babies to replace themselves and their partners, the latest national birth data suggests.
In what the U.S Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) described as a “nonsignificant decline,” the nation recorded 3,661,220 new babies in 2022, just a few thousand less than the year before.
Overall, the fertility rate was 1.665 births per women in 2022, according to the CDC report (pdf) released this month.
For reference, a fertility rate of 2.1 births per woman is considered “replacement level,” where a generation can exactly replace itself.
“The total fertility rate in 2022 remained at below replacement,” the CDC said. “The rate has generally been below replacement since 1971 and consistently below replacement since 2007.”…