Trendspotting: US Fertility Continues to Fall

 Newswire: 5/27/20

• According to the latest provisional data, the U.S. fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.71 in 2019. The total number of births declined for the fifth year in a row and is now at its lowest since 1985. (National Center for Health Statistics)
• NH: No surprise here. This is the fifth year in a row that the U.S. total fertility rate (TFR) has fallen. If you exclude the 2014 blip, it has fallen for ten years. See “U.S. Birthrate Drops for 4^th year in a Row.”
• What did the provisional report say? The TFR fell 1% from 1.73 in 2018 to 1.71 in 2019, marking (once again) the lowest rate ever recorded. As for race and ethnicity, every major group experienced a decline in the total number of births. Whites had the largest drop in births with the next largest being blacks. Hispanics had only a slight dip. As for age brackets, the birth rate fell for every age group below age 34. The only significant increase was for women age 40-44, with their birth rate increasing from 11.8 in 2018 to 12.0 in 2019.
• U.S. fertility is surely going to keep dropping. The economy in 2019 was the best America has seen in over a decade, and there was still no improvement in TFR. Most Millennials live a carefully planned life, only having children when their economic outlook seems in order. Now that over 38 million Americans have filed for unemployment, many more risk-averse Millennials will keep putting off parenthood. See “U.S. Fertility Passes Another (Ominous) Milestone.”
• If Millennials were ever to reverse their low fertility, this would probably be signaled by a rise in the 30-34 age bracket. To start catching up on lifetime births, we would expect early-wave Millennials to start catching up by having children at an older age (what demographers call a "tempo effect"). But as of 2019 the birthrate for women in their early 30s is still dropping.