Demographic warning sign: U.S. births in 2023 fell to the lowest level since 1979

U.S. births went back to its decreasing trend in 2023, falling to the lowest annual level since 1979, according to figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Concretely, there were just under 3.6 million births last year, about 76,000 fewer than the year before.

Numbers had been dropping for over a decade and plummeted by 4% between 2019 and 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. They grew for two years in a row, an increase that experts attributed in part to pregnancies that had been put off during the first part of Covid, but now have gone down again.

Rates fell down across all demographics except for Latinas, which ticked up by 1%. They also dropped for most age groups except for women in their 40s, for which it remained flat.

Overall, the U.S. continues to have a "replacement rate" that's lower than what's needed to ensure the population keeps growing. It's currently 1.6 kids per woman, compared to the 2.1 necessary.

Surveys have shown that many in the U.S. would like to have two or more children, but concerns about costs, job security and housing prevent them from doing so.

The U.S. is far from being the only country in this situation. A major global study published in November last year showed that the population of almost every country will be shrinking by the end of the century.

The fertility rate in half of all nations is already too low to maintain their population size, an international team of hundreds of researchers reported. By 2050, the population of three quarters of all countries will be shrinking and 97% of all countries will be in the same situation by the end of the century.

The U.S. is, however, one of the few countries where external factors could help counter the decline. Projections released late last year by the Census Bureau showed different scenarios bases on low, medium or high immigration scenarios.

The first one sees U.S. population shrinking to 319 million from the current 333 million. It could grow to 365 million in the second scenario and to 435 million with high immigration. Each one of these would vastly change the demographic composition of the country.

In the medium immigration scenario, the share of the white-non Hispanic population will be under 50% for the first time. By then, "Hispanic residents will account for a quarter of the U.S. population, up from 19.1% today." "African Americans will make up 14.4% of the population, up from 13.6% currently. Asians will account for 8.6% of the population, up from 6.2% today," The Associated Press explained.

By the turn of the century, foreign-born population will make up almost a fifth of all residents, the highest share since the Census Bureau started keeping track in 1850.