U.S. birth rate hits new record low

A headline at Science alert:

US Fertility Rates Have Plummeted Into Uncharted Territory, And Nobody Knows Why

Peter Dockrill writes,

The US birth rate has hit a new record low, with women in nearly every age group giving birth to fewer babies than a year ago.

New figures show just 60.2 babies were born in 2017 for every 1,000 women of 'childbearing' age (15-44) – a low not seen in the US since officials began charting national birth rates decades ago.

The statistic – contained in new provisional birth data for 2017 released by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – is what's called the general fertility rate (GFR), which saw a 3 percent fall from the rate in 2016: the largest single-year GFR decline since 2010.

...What's more, the TFR is now clearly hundreds of births short of what is called 'replacement': the level of births needed for a generation to replicate its population count.

In the US, that marker is 2,100 births per 1,000 women – well above the current 1,764.5 – although the shortfall is nothing new: the CDC says the US birth rate has generally been below replacement since 1971.

Continuing the theme, the total number of births in the US for 2017 was 3,853,472 – a 2 percent fall from 2016's count, but also the third straight year showing a decline, resulting in what is now the lowest number of births in 30 years.

Read more here.