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 Birth rate in the United States fell 4% in 2020 to about 3.6 million
babies, its sixth consecutive annual decline and the lowest since
1979, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.
The CDC did not attribute the overall decline to the pandemic, but
experts have predicted that pandemic-led reasons including anxiety
will hit the country's birth rate.
In general, U.S. fertility rates have continued to fall over the
years as women marry late and delay motherhood especially in years
when the economy has slowed.
Older data
https://www.prb.org/
usrecessionandbirthrate from Population Reference Bureau (PRB), a
nonprofit statistics collector, showed that the U.S. birth rate
reached an all-time low in 1936 following the 1929 stock market
crash.
Later, through the 1970s, birth rates took a hit again in the wake
of big social changes including the landmark Roe v. Wade
https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Roe_v._Wade#:~:text=Roe%20v.%20Wade%2C%20410%20U.S.,abortion%20without%20excessive%20government%20restriction
legal case on abortion.
In December 2020, Brookings Institute said in a report that it
anticipates around 300,000 fewer births in the United States in
2021.
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 Many European countries have
also seen a decline in births, and demographics
experts have forecast a baby bust across the
continent this year.
For instance, births in Italy in December - nine
months after the country went into Europe's
first lockdown - plunged 22%, data showed.
Big corporations such as Reckitt, Nestle and
Danone have posted a drop in sales of baby
formula, partly blaming declining birth rates as
well.
CDC said United States' general fertility rate,
which measures the number of births per 1,000
women aged between 15 and 44 declined by 4%.
This provisional data is based on 99.87% of all
birth records registered and processed last year
by the National Center for Health Statistics as
of Feb. 11, 2021, according to CDC.
(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru;
Additional reporting by Siddharth Cavale;
Editing by Rashmi Aich, Sayantani Ghosh and Anil
D'Silva)
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