U.S. births declined slightly in 2025, CDC reports

The report reflects the ongoing gradual decline in U.S. births that has persisted for most of the past two decades, only interrupted by a modest uptick in 2024.

The number of births in the United States fell by 1% in 2025, according to provisional data released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There were 3,606,400 live births last year, down from 3,628,934 in 2024, the National Center for Health Statistics reported.

The general fertility rate dropped 1% to 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15–44, continuing a long-term decline of 23% since its 2007 peak.

The most notable decline came in teenage births, which reached another historic low. The birth rate for females ages 15–19 fell 7% to 11.7 births per 1,000 — the lowest rate ever recorded.

In total, 125,933 babies were born to teen mothers in 2025, an 8% decrease from the previous year.

Rates dropped for both younger teens (ages 15–17) and older teens (ages 18–19), with both age groups setting new record lows.

The provisional figures are based on nearly all (99.95%) birth records received and processed by the CDC as of early February. Final 2025 numbers, expected later this year, are not anticipated to change significantly.

The report reflects the ongoing gradual decline in U.S. births that has persisted for most of the past two decades, interrupted only by a modest uptick in 2024.

Experts continue to link the broader trend to factors such as abortion, biotechnology, economic pressures, and shifting social and political priorities.

“There is no single driver of declining birth rates, and yet what is undeniable is that due to anti-life technologies, economic pressures, bad policies, and cultural movements such as girl-boss feminism, more and more women are delaying or forgoing children,” said Emma Waters, a senior policy analyst in the Center for Technology and the Human Person at The Heritage Foundation.

“Increasingly, it is women without a college degree who are opting out of children, in part because it feels like a luxury or elite enterprise to get married and have kids, and sadly our elite class only continues to fuel this lie,” she said.

Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, also expressed concern about the broader trend.

“The continuing decline in birth rates in the U.S. is very worrisome,” Mosher said. “We seem to be going the way of Old Europe, that is, entering an extended period of low fertility that puts us, as a country, in danger of entering into an irrecoverable demographic decline.”

He pointed to multiple possible factors, including “the increasingly widespread use of the abortion pill” and high numbers of abortions reported by Planned Parenthood.

According to the groupʼs 2024-2025 annual report, Planned Parenthood performed an all-time high of 434,450 abortions in 2023-2024.

The record number of abortions is an 8% increase, or about 32,000 more abortions, from the previous year. The number does not include telehealth chemical abortions, which are a growing percentage of all abortions, especially for teenagers and young adults.

A recent report, published in the journal JAMA Health Forum, found that young adults (ages 18–24) order abortion medication at much higher rates than older adults and that more teenagers order abortion pills in states with parental notification or consent laws around abortion.

The report found a “growing demand among adolescents and young adults in legally constrained environments.”

Mosher also attributed part of the decline in births to stricter immigration enforcement.

“Another part of the decline is surely related to the now-closed border and the crackdown on ‘birth tourism,’ which means that fewer and fewer babies [of foreign-born parents] are being born in the U.S.,” he said. “Ten percent of all births in the U.S. in 2024 were to illegal aliens, a percentage that is undoubtedly lower in 2025 as deportations and remigration reduce their numbers.”

The CDC also found that the cesarean delivery rate rose slightly to 32.5%, the highest since 2013, while the preterm birth rate held steady at 10.41%. Early preterm births (less than 34 weeks) saw a small 1% decline.