Utah slides to No. 10 for fertility in U.S.

U.S. and Utah fertility rates are continuing a years-long slide, landing in both cases below the 2.1 births per woman that would keep the population size stable.

That’s according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national Center for Health Statistics. An analysis of the numbers by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute found the U.S. fertility rate in 2023 — the last year with complete data — was 1.521, down 2.1% from the year before.

Utah is now No. 10 in terms of fertility, down from No. 4 last year. The Beehive State’s total fertility rate has been flat or declining for 15 years in a row, dropping to 1.801 in 2023.

North Dakota and Mississippi saw higher total fertility rates, while Tennessee stayed flat. Those are the only states that didn’t see a decline in 2023, according to Emily Harris, the institute’s senior demographer. “Economic factors such as housing and childcare costs and broader social issues like postponement of marriage and childbearing all influence fertility rate declines,” she said in a written statement.

Fertility highlights from the report:

• Utah’s fertility rate decrease continues a 12-year trend of being flat or sliding. It’s a slower decrease, though, than the 3.4% drop seen from 2021 to 2022.
• The recent decline was primarily driven by fertility declines among women in the 25-29 and 30-34 age brackets. Just two age groups — teens 15-17 and middle-aged women, ages 45-49 — saw some increased fertility. Among the teens, the rate increased by 9.7%, while it climbed 25% among those who are 45-49.
• The highest fertility rate is found in South Dakota, followed by Nebraska, North Dakota, Alaska and Louisiana.
• The District of Columbia, Vermont, Rhode Island, Oregon and New Hampshire rank lowest for fertility.

Making of a trend

There are two ways to keep population size stable: an adequate number of births or an adequate level of immigration.

The Congressional Budget Office told the Associated Press that without immigration, the U.S. population will shrink beginning in 2033. Among reasons, “because fertility rates are projected to remain too low for a generation to replace itself.”

Back in 1990, women under 30 accounted for 7 in 10 births, as Healthday reported. These days, the article said that age group is saying, “Meh.” By 2023, per Healthday, fewer than half of the births in the U.S. were to women in that age group.

“Choosing to delay parenthood until later in life ‘results in a mix of postponed and foregone pregnancy,’ researchers wrote,” per that article.

Their research has “tentatively” convinced Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine, two nonresident Brookings Institution scholars that “shifting priorities” when it comes to work, family and how to spend time and money are probably responsible for the reduction in childbearing by young adults in recent years.

“We have not found compelling data support for more readily observed (and potentially altered) policy or economic factors, like the price of childcare or rent. Whether the experience of the COVID pandemic — and how it shifted people’s thinking about their life choices and priorities—will ultimately lead to a sustained rebound in births, a further decline, or simply fade into memory is yet to be seen," the two wrote for a Brookings commentary.

Crisis hidden in the numbers?

Some believe that the worldwide decline in the fertility rate is a global crisis in the making.

Those alive in 2044 are likely to be the first “to see the population of the planet fall in a systematic way,” Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said in October at a lecture at Harvard University, as Deseret News earlier reported.

One of the challenges, according to Brad Wilcox and Wendy Wang, is that women may not have the number of children they’d like. “Even today, most young women say they would like to have a family. Among women under 35 today, 30% already have children, 41% say they want to have children, 15% are not sure, and only 14% say they don’t wish to have children, according to a new Institute for Family Studies/YouGov survey of 2,000 young adults conducted in May to June of 2024,” wrote Wang, director of research at the Institute for Family Studies, and Wilcox, a sociology professor at University of Virginia, whose other titles include author and institute scholar.

As the Deseret News has reported, there are some ramifications of a fertility rate decrease that many may not consider. The potential fallout includes economic stagnation, a tattered social safety net with more people relying on it than those who support it and a dearth of innovation and entrepreneurship, among other things.