Provisional data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week showed that the fertility rate in the United States hit a record low and the total number of births in the country was the lowest it’s been in decades.
According to the report, slightly fewer than 3.6 million babies were born in 2023, or 54.4 births per 1,000 women aged 15 through 44. This was a 2% decline in total births and a 3% decline in births per 1,000 women when compared with the previous year.
The total fertility rate, which estimates how many children an average woman would have over the course of her life based on the yearly data, was just over 1.6 births per woman, which was a 2% decline from the previous year. This is well below the replacement rate needed to sustain a population, which is about 2.1 births per woman over her life.
This was the fewest number of babies born in the United States in a year since 1979 and the lowest fertility rate recorded in American history — just under the previous record lows set in 2020.
The 2023 decline reverses a minor fertility rate bump for the calendar years of 2021 and 2022, which was the first increase since 2014. The 2023 numbers continue a wider trend in fertility declines since the 1960s when contraception became widely available in the United States and the women’s liberation movement began to emerge. Abortion became widely available in the 1970s after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision — which was overturned in 2022.
Fertility rates by age group
The birth rate dropped for teenagers and women in their 20s and 30s — but the decline was sharper for teenagers and women in their 20s than it was for women in their 30s. The birth rate for women in their 40s did not show significant changes.
According to the data, the 2023 birth rate for teenagers aged 15 through 19 was 13.2 per 1,000 women, which was a 3% decline from the previous year. The birth rate for women aged 20 to 24 was 55.4 births for 1,000 women, which is a 4% decline from the previous year. The birth rate for women aged 25 through 29 was 91 births per 1,000 women, which was a 3% decline from the previous year.
The 2023 birth rate for women aged 30 through 34 was 95.1 births per 1,000 women, which was a 2% decline from the previous year. For women aged 35 through 39, there were 54.7 births per 1,000 women, which was a decrease of less than 1%.
Fertility rates by ethnic group
According to the report, most ethnic groups saw a decline in total births and a decrease in fertility rates from 2022 to 2023 — but this reduction affected some ethnic groups at different rates.
The total number of births was down 5% for American Indian and Alaska Native women, 4% for Black women, 3% for white women, and 2% for Asian women. For Hispanic women, the total number of births went up by 1%. There was not much change for Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander women.
No ethnic group saw an increased general fertility rate from 2022 to 2023. It decreased by 5% among American Indian and Alaska Native women and Black women, by 3% for Asian and white women, and by 1% for Hispanic women. The rate was virtually unchanged for Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander women.
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Dainelys Soto, Genesis Contreras, and Daniel Soto, who arrived from Venezuela after crossing the U.S. border from Mexico, wait for dinner at a hotel provided by the Annunciation House on Sept. 22, 2022 in El Paso, Texas. / Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
CNA Staff, Sep 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Long a champion of immigrants, particularly those fleeing war-torn countries and impoverished regions, Pope Francis last month delivered some of the clearest words in his papacy yet in support of migrants — and in rebuke of those who turn away from them.
“It must be said clearly: There are those who work systematically and with every means possible to repel migrants,” the pope said during a weekly Angelus address. “And this, when done with awareness and responsibility, is a grave sin.”
“In the time of satellites and drones, there are migrant men, women, and children that no one must see,” the pope said. “They hide them. Only God sees them and hears their cry. This is a cruelty of our civilization.”
The pope has regularly spoken out in favor of immigrants. In June he called on the faithful to “unite in prayer for all those who have had to leave their land in search of dignified living conditions.” The Holy Father has called the protection of migrants a “moral imperative.” He has argued that migrants “[must] be received” and dealt with humanely.
Migrants aboard an inflatable vessel in the Mediterranean Sea approach the guided-missile destroyer USS Carney in 2013. Carney provided food and water to the migrants aboard the vessel before coordinating with a nearby merchant vessel to take them to safety. Credit: Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Catholic Church has long been an advocate and protector of immigrants. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) notes on its website that “a rich body of Church teaching, including papal encyclicals, bishops’ statements, and pastoral letters, has consistently reinforced our moral obligation to treat the stranger as we would treat Christ himself.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that prosperous nations “are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.”
Popes throughout the years, meanwhile, have expressed sentiments on immigration similar to Francis’. Pope Pius XII in 1952, for instance, described the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt as “the archetype of every refugee family.”
The Church, Pius XII said, “has been especially careful to provide all possible spiritual care for pilgrims, aliens, exiles, and migrants of every kind.”
Meanwhile, “devout associations” throughout the centuries have spearheaded “innumerable hospices and hospitals” in part for immigrants, Pius XII said.
Implications and applications of Church teaching
Chad Pecknold, an associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America, noted that the catechism “teaches that nations have the right to borders and self-definition, so there is no sense in which Catholic teaching supports the progressive goal of ‘open borders.’”
“There is a ‘duty of care’ which is owed to those fleeing from danger,” he told CNA, “but citizenship is not owed to anyone who can make it across a national border, and illegal entry or asylum cannot be taken as a debt of citizenship.”
Paul Hunker, an immigration attorney who previously served as chief counsel of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Dallas, agreed.
“States have to have responsibility for their own communities, they have to look out for them,” he told CNA. “So immigration can be regulated so as to not harm the common good.”
Still, Hunker noted, Catholic advocates are not wrong in responding to immigration crises — like the ongoing irregular influx through the U.S. southern border — with aid and assistance.
Paul Hunker, an immigration attorney and former chief counsel of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Dallas, says Catholic advocates are not wrong in responding to immigration crises — like the ongoing irregular influx through the U.S. southern border — with aid and assistance. Credit: Photo courtesy of Paul Hunker
Many Catholic organizations offer shelter, food, and legal assistance to men, women, and children who cross into the country illegally; such groups have been overwhelmed in recent years with the crush of arriving migrants at the country’s southern border.
“It’s the responsibility of the federal government to take care of the border,” he said. “When the government has created a crisis at the U.S. border, Catholic dioceses are going to want to help people.”
“I completely support what the Catholic organizations are doing in Mexico and the United States to assist people who are there,” Hunker said. “The people responding are not responsible for these crises.”
Latest crisis and legal challenge
Not everyone feels similarly. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation of multiple Catholic nonprofits that serve illegal immigrants in the state. Paxton alleges that through the services it provides to migrants, El Paso-based Annunciation House has been facilitating illegal immigration and human trafficking.
A lawyer for the group called the allegations “utter nonsense,” though attorney Jerome Wesevich acknowledged that the nonprofit “serves undocumented persons as an expression of the Catholic faith and Jesus’ command to love one another, no exceptions.”
There are considerable numbers of Church teachings that underscore the need for a charitable response to immigrants. In his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII argued that man “has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own state,” and further that “when there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there.”
In the encyclical Caritas in Veritate, meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 acknowledged that migration poses “dramatic challenges” for nations but that migrants “cannot be considered as a commodity or a mere workforce.”
“Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance,” the late pope wrote.
Edward Feser, a professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College in California, noted that the Church “teaches that nations should be welcoming to immigrants, that they should be sensitive to the hardships that lead them to emigrate, that they ought not to scapegoat them for domestic problems, and so on.”
Catholic teaching does not advocate an ‘open borders’ policy
Yet Catholic teaching does not advocate an “open borders” policy, Feser said. He emphasized that the catechism says countries should accept immigrants “to the extent they are able,” and further that countries “may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions.”
There “is nothing per se in conflict with Catholic teaching when citizens and politicians call on the federal government to enforce its immigration laws,” Feser said. “On the contrary, the catechism backs them up on this.”
In addition, it is “perfectly legitimate,” Feser argued, for governments to consider both economic and cultural concerns when setting immigration policy. It is also “legitimate to deport those who enter a country illegally,” he said.
Still, he acknowledged, a country can issue exceptions to valid immigration laws when the moral situation demands it.
“Of course, there can be individual cases where a nation should forgo its right to deport those who enter it illegally, and cases where the manner in which deportations occur is associated with moral hazards, such as when doing so would break up families or return an immigrant to dangerous conditions back in his home country,” he said.
“Governments should take account of this when formulating and enforcing policy,” he said.
The tension between responding charitably to immigrants and ensuring a secure border was perhaps put most succinctly in 1986 by the late Father Theodore Hesburgh, who served as chairman of the U.S. Select Commission for Immigration and Refugee Policy that was created by the U.S. Congress in the early 1980s.
“It is not enough to sympathize with the aspirations and plight of illegal aliens. We must also consider the consequences of not controlling our borders,” said the late Father Theodore Hesburgh, who served as chairman of the U.S. Select Commission for Immigration and Refugee Policy that was created by the U.S. Congress in the early 1980s. Credit: Photo courtesy of University of Notre Dame
Writing several years after the commission, Hesburgh explained: “It is not enough to sympathize with the aspirations and plight of illegal aliens. We must also consider the consequences of not controlling our borders.”
“What about the aspirations of Americans who must compete for jobs and whose wages and work standards are depressed by the presence of large numbers of illegal aliens?” the legendary late president of the University of Notre Dame reflected. “What about aliens who are victimized by unscrupulous employers and who die in the desert at the hands of smugglers?”
“The nation needn’t wait until we are faced with a choice between immigration chaos and closing the borders,” Hesburgh stated nearly 40 years ago.
The whining about a decline in teen birthrates as if that is something bad here is disturbing. What is wrong with you people? Teens should be living their lives and learning how to navigate the world as they transition to adulthood. What they should not be doing is having babies. EVER.
What would the problem be for 18 and 19 year olds to be parents?
When my mother was in high-school many of her classmates were engaged by graduation .
By the time women marry today, if they marry at all, they’re already on the downward cusp of their fertile years.
If I’m to believe a substantial number of social media laments, the pursuit of some college degrees through the use of student loans is the recipe for poverty and problems for teenagers.
Yup.
I understand it’s not a common thing but I know 3 multi millionaires in our area who are high-school dropouts. Each owns their own business and one was featured recently in Forbes.
Higher education has it’s place but I think there really needs to be an important reason to accumulate that much debt. Lawyers, physicians, and scientists-sure. The rest of us? It’s going to vary.
I dont think the article was advocating for teenage births. The article was basically providing the statistics on women in the typical range of childbearing years, from age 15 to 40. Do women give birth outside those ages? Indeed they do, but it is too uncommon a number to draw conclusions about. The general observation drawn in the article is that live births are down. Doubtless much of this is from a cultural shift of many sorts: women going on to college and beyond for education, making long term careers, and a desire to get more material things which requires work to gather the cash.That all would delay childbirth, sometimes permanently.
One cannot discount the impact of abortion either. While unwed pregnancy and abortion have both gained societal approval in recent decades, whether society has found a good balance with all of this remains to be seen. Sadly, many women value careers over motherhood and fewer pregnancies would be the effect.I am reminded of a saying I once heard: Nobody ever lay in bed dying and said “I wish I had spent more time at work.” Personally I dont think that “work friends” have the same value as children and family either. No matter how much money you have acquired.
After 9/11, when I was desperate to read something focused on something other than the dominant topics of the day, I happened upon an account of OB-GYN practicing in New York.
This doctor told of numerous accounts of women in their mid 30’s to late 40’s, who having attained a position in some high-end law firm or Wall Street, would enter into his office, completely vexed at their inability to conceive and seeking some medical intervention. I remember several important facts from the article.
One was that these women seemed not to understand the decline in fertility with age-a misunderstanding that seemed to be buttressed by several accounts of late-in-life babies born to celebrity women-they didn’t understand these births were often the result not of the marital act: but a conception in a Petri dish or other exotic or expensive interventions. The doctor said he was constantly confronted with women who had to be told that just because they were psychologically ready for children, doesn’t mean their bodies were still capable. As I recall he described the inconsolable sobbing of women being told that in all likelihood, their fertility was over and that “40 is the new 30” was a social convention at odds with biology.
The biological reality is that a woman’s prime years for conception are something like 17-29. Are there women who conceive-even for the first time-at 35 or more? Sure, but a woman conceiving after 35 is automatically assigned the code “supervision of elderly primigravida”, in recognition of the medical issues associated with the situation.
We have a problem in that physical maturity or maximum fertility occurs at a different time than social or occupational maturity. Thus women are having children in their 30’s, and on the downward slope of fertility. Early 30’s seems to work, but late 30’s,not so much.
40’s is a big problem. If you are going to have children, don’t wait until you are 40.
Yep.
Contraception/abortion and feminism’s downgrading of marriage and motherhood.
What did we expect?
The whining about a decline in teen birthrates as if that is something bad here is disturbing. What is wrong with you people? Teens should be living their lives and learning how to navigate the world as they transition to adulthood. What they should not be doing is having babies. EVER.
What would the problem be for 18 and 19 year olds to be parents?
When my mother was in high-school many of her classmates were engaged by graduation .
By the time women marry today, if they marry at all, they’re already on the downward cusp of their fertile years.
Teenagers should not be having babies anyway. Poverty and problems for most teenage pregnancies.
If I’m to believe a substantial number of social media laments, the pursuit of some college degrees through the use of student loans is the recipe for poverty and problems for teenagers.
Yup.
I understand it’s not a common thing but I know 3 multi millionaires in our area who are high-school dropouts. Each owns their own business and one was featured recently in Forbes.
Higher education has it’s place but I think there really needs to be an important reason to accumulate that much debt. Lawyers, physicians, and scientists-sure. The rest of us? It’s going to vary.
Lets exercise a little calm, shall we?
I dont think the article was advocating for teenage births. The article was basically providing the statistics on women in the typical range of childbearing years, from age 15 to 40. Do women give birth outside those ages? Indeed they do, but it is too uncommon a number to draw conclusions about. The general observation drawn in the article is that live births are down. Doubtless much of this is from a cultural shift of many sorts: women going on to college and beyond for education, making long term careers, and a desire to get more material things which requires work to gather the cash.That all would delay childbirth, sometimes permanently.
One cannot discount the impact of abortion either. While unwed pregnancy and abortion have both gained societal approval in recent decades, whether society has found a good balance with all of this remains to be seen. Sadly, many women value careers over motherhood and fewer pregnancies would be the effect.I am reminded of a saying I once heard: Nobody ever lay in bed dying and said “I wish I had spent more time at work.” Personally I dont think that “work friends” have the same value as children and family either. No matter how much money you have acquired.
After 9/11, when I was desperate to read something focused on something other than the dominant topics of the day, I happened upon an account of OB-GYN practicing in New York.
This doctor told of numerous accounts of women in their mid 30’s to late 40’s, who having attained a position in some high-end law firm or Wall Street, would enter into his office, completely vexed at their inability to conceive and seeking some medical intervention. I remember several important facts from the article.
One was that these women seemed not to understand the decline in fertility with age-a misunderstanding that seemed to be buttressed by several accounts of late-in-life babies born to celebrity women-they didn’t understand these births were often the result not of the marital act: but a conception in a Petri dish or other exotic or expensive interventions. The doctor said he was constantly confronted with women who had to be told that just because they were psychologically ready for children, doesn’t mean their bodies were still capable. As I recall he described the inconsolable sobbing of women being told that in all likelihood, their fertility was over and that “40 is the new 30” was a social convention at odds with biology.
The biological reality is that a woman’s prime years for conception are something like 17-29. Are there women who conceive-even for the first time-at 35 or more? Sure, but a woman conceiving after 35 is automatically assigned the code “supervision of elderly primigravida”, in recognition of the medical issues associated with the situation.
Thank you for sharing that, Pitchfork.
I think I read that same article.
I had my last (#3) at age 34. Tried for #4 at age 36 or so. Months and months later, we finally gave up.
We have a problem in that physical maturity or maximum fertility occurs at a different time than social or occupational maturity. Thus women are having children in their 30’s, and on the downward slope of fertility. Early 30’s seems to work, but late 30’s,not so much.
40’s is a big problem. If you are going to have children, don’t wait until you are 40.
No surprise here. Humanae Vitae, anyone?