Introduction
New government statistics show that the birth rate in the United States dropped by 2 percent last year compared to 2022, thus keeping with the well-documented long-term trend.
In all, such annual U. S. birth numbers have dropped 17% since the 2007 high, according to data provided in a new report from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The general fertility rate (per 1,000 women) has dropped 21% simultaneously, according to the report.
Thus, teenage childbearing, which includes births to females at 15 to 19 years, also continued the decline by 4% in the fiscal year 2023, as per data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) analyzed by Joyce Martin et al. Altogether, the births documented in the United States last year totaled 3,596,017, while the birth rate of the preceding year was 3,667,758.
CDC Birth highlights
In other data on CDC births, the proportion of pregnant women with adequate care in 2023 was lower than in 2022.
The former was down by 1% from the prior year, and the latter was up by 5%, continuing a trend observed from 2021 to 2022. “Late and no-care levels have risen steadily since 2016,” Martin’s team pointed out in the report.
Preterm Births in 2023
About 10. 4% of births were preterm in 2023, same as the previous year, 2022. Preterm births, defined as births that occurred during the gestational period of 37 and 38 completed weeks, increased by 2%. “Since the prior low in 2014, preterm births increased by 9%, early-term births by 21%, while full-term, late, and post-term decreased,” the NCHS team pointed out. These new data were released on 20 August 2014 as an NCHS Data Brief.
