U.S. Birth Rate Hits a New Record Low as Women in Their 20s Have Far Fewer Babies
The CDC says the fertility rate fell 1% in 2025, with a 6% drop among women ages 20 to 24, even as births to women 30 to 45 edged up.
The U.S. general fertility rate fell 1% in 2025 to a new record low, extending a two-decade slide in American births, according to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The drop was steepest among the youngest women. The birth rate for women ages 20 to 24 fell 6% in a single year, and the rate for women in their late teens fell 7%. "Certainly the 6% decline in the birthrate for women age 20 to 24 is noteworthy," said Brady Hamilton, a demographer at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics who co-authored the report. Moving the other way, the data show a small but significant increase in births among women ages 30 to 45.
Sarah Harris of Vermont is part of that shift. She was 36 when she gave birth to her daughter Bridget last year, and she was laid off four months later. She says the cost of raising a child convinced her one is enough. "I think in another era or another life or another scenario, I might have had more children," Harris told NPR. "I think we're in a difficult societal moment and so that's absolutely affecting people's reproductive choices."
Researchers see broad forces behind the trend. A study released last month by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that Gen Z women, those in their late teens and twenties, are "dramatically less likely to want children" than women in earlier generations. The study cited increased labor market opportunities and agency among women, rising financial costs, changing priorities and concerns about maternal mortality.
Dr. Tanise Branche, medical director of labor and delivery at Temple Health in Philadelphia, said more of her younger patients are following a different life script. "They're starting to focus not necessarily just on what they can bring to kids, but what's going to be best for them," she said. Branche is pregnant with her fourth child and will be 43 at her last delivery. She began her own reproductive journey at 37. "I see the net positive being that we have a choice," she said.
Some experts argue that many women would have more children if they could afford them and had support such as affordable housing, child care and health insurance. "The fact that there are a lot of people who still say they want families, but don't feel like they're able to have them [is a concern]," said Anna Louie Sussman, author of the new book Inconceivable. "Young people say, I can barely take care of myself, I can't imagine taking care of someone else." Sussman froze her eggs and had her child in her early 40s.
The effects are already visible. The Census Bureau reports the population under age 18 is shrinking steadily, dropping by more than 1 million from 2010 to 2020. The median U.S. age reached 39.4 in 2025, and more states, including Vermont, are seeing outright population decline. Harris says she thinks about it often. She lives in a small community that is trying to keep its elementary school open for as long as it can.
The numbers point to a country that is aging and having fewer children, shaped less by one policy than by millions of individual decisions about money, timing and what a good life requires.
