The United States recorded another decline in births in 2025, extending a long downward trend that now spans nearly two decades. New provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that fertility continues to weaken across nearly every major demographic.
But the pattern is not confined to America. Across much of the developed world, births are falling, family formation is weakening, and the demographic retreat is unfolding alongside larger economic, cultural, and political shifts.
Further Down
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, “the provisional number of births for the United States in 2025 was 3,606,400, a decrease of 1% from the number in 2024 (3,628,934).” The agency also noted that “the number of births declined by an average 2% per year from 2015 through 2020 and has generally fluctuated since then.”
The decline extends beyond raw births, reflecting a sustained drop in fertility itself. The CDC reported:
The provisional general fertility rate for the United States in 2025 was 53.1 births per 1,000 females ages 15–44, a decrease of 1% from the rate in 2024 (53.8).
That matters because 2024 had already marked a historically low point. The 2025 figure moves the country further down, setting a new floor in a trend that has persisted for nearly two decades.
The broader trajectory is not ambiguous. The latest report states that “the rate has generally declined since 2007, decreasing by 23%.”
The longer historical view reinforces the point. The CDC has previously reported that between 1990 and 2023, the United States experienced a 14-percent decline in the number of births and a 23-percent decline in the general fertility rate. In other words, each year adds another data point to the same direction, and that direction leads away from replacement.
For a population to remain stable, the total fertility rate must hover around 2.1 children per woman. The United States is now well below that threshold. By 2024, it had fallen to roughly 1.6. That gap is not academic — it defines whether a society sustains itself over time or begins to contract.
Younger Generations Opting Out
One of the clearest signals in the data comes from younger age groups.
Teen birth rates continued to fall in 2025, a trend generally seen as positive. Indeed, teen pregnancy is often linked to higher medical, educational, and economic risks for both mother and child. The fertility rate for females ages 15 to 19 dropped by 7 percent, while rates for younger teens fell even more sharply.
But the broader picture remains troubling. U.S. fertility as a whole keeps sliding, and births are increasingly delayed, deferred, or forgone. This trend has been consistent for years. U.S. Census Bureau data show that childlessness is rising among women in their prime reproductive years:
- In 2014, about 75% of women ages 20 to 24 had not had children. By 2024, that figure had jumped to 85%.
- Among women ages 25 to 29, childlessness rose from about 50% to 63%.
- Even women in their 30s and early 40s saw increases in childlessness: about 40% of women ages 30 to 34 were childless in 2024, up from about 29% in 2014.
The only age group in which childlessness declined was women aged 45 to 50. This suggests that more women are postponing childbirth into later years.
Still, postponement often results in fewer total births. Inevitably, biology and aging impose limits that economics and culture cannot fully overcome.
Surveys confirm the shift in preferences. A 2025 Pew Research study found that the number of children Americans say they want has declined to below two. That figure had remained stable for years before falling after 2012.
Behind the Decline
Fertility does not collapse for just one reason. It declines under multiple, concomitant pressures: economic, environmental, and cultural.
Affordability sits near the center. For many young adults, the foundations needed to start a family feel far less secure than they once did. Housing costs have surged. In many regions, childcare rivals a second rent payment, and education, healthcare, and daily expenses continue to climb.
At the same time, wages have not kept pace in ways that inspire confidence. Many young adults carry significant debt. Many enter stable careers later in life, if ever. In that environment, having children begins to look less like a natural next step and more like a serious financial gamble.
Beyond economics, attention has turned to environmental and health factors. Researchers have long studied endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can interfere with hormonal systems tied to reproduction. Advocacy groups such as Children’s Health Defense (CHD) point to chemical exposure in food, water, and consumer products.
Medical interventions have also entered the conversation. Among them are Covid-19 vaccines (and other shots), as extensively documented by this magazine (see here, here, here, here and here).
Culture shapes the outcome as well. The institution of the family is under assault. Marriage rates continue to decline, while cohabitation rises. Parenthood is no longer treated as a natural or expected path, but as a choice that can be delayed or rejected altogether. At the same time, abortion as a form of “birth control” has long been normalized, while vice is recast as “freedom.”
A feedback loop emerges. The fewer children people have, the less fixed parenthood feels as a norm. And the weaker that norm becomes, the fewer children people tend to have.
Global Context
The fertility decline is not unique to the United States; it spans much of the developed world. In other words, this is not just about private choices or cultural drift. It also tracks with ideological, geopolitical, and strategic currents that have shaped elite thinking for decades.
As Dennis Behreandt, former publisher of The New American, argues in his book End Game, eugenic and Malthusian ideas have long influenced Western policy circles. At their core is the view that human beings become a burden when their numbers strain systems, planning models, or resource assumptions.
That logic appeared openly in the 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM200), known as the Kissinger Report, which examined world population growth in relation to U.S. security and overseas interests.
As documented by Behreandt and others in this magazine, both the United Nations and the World Economic Forum (WEF) share the same anti-human outlook.
The practical implementation of that worldview has been bloody. Writes Behreandt:
The 20th century witnessed the rise of internationalist Deep State obsession with both eugenics and population reduction, leading to all manner of international crimes against humanity, up to and including the genocide of hundreds of millions of innocent people.
From wars to the Covid pandemic, the result has been more deaths and fewer births.
Technology adds an even darker layer. As fertility falls and populations age, elites increasingly present artificial intelligence as both the answer to demographic decline and the tool for managing its consequences. In practice, that means a world in which growing numbers of people are treated as economically redundant, while surveillance, behavioral management, and social control continue to expand.
In that light, declining fertility looks like more than a social trend. It looks like the demographic expression of a civilization whose ruling institutions have long treated humans less as a blessing than as a problem.
