The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and a new report shows that another drop in births in 2023 brought the rate down to the lowest it’s been in more than a century.

There were about 3.6 million babies born in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

After a steep plunge in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fertility rate has fluctuated. But the 3% drop between 2022 and 2023 brought the rate just below the previous low from 2020, which was 56 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      You mean more older people to support for each worker, so higher taxes on workers

      • maynarkh@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 months ago

        That’s just fearmongering. We have enough shit to help everyone already, and we are automating jobs at a very high rate, to the point that a lot of jobs are literal unneeded bullshit.

        If anything, fewer workers always meant more worker power, better organizing, higher wages, etc. Look at what happened when the oligarchic idiots got a whole generation killed in WWI. Labour won big after, since labour was scarce, while capital was not.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      You have it backwatds, there will not be the same quantity of stuff divided by fewer people. There will be less of everything to begin with.