The number of women in the United States who gave birth dropped last year, according to federal statistics released Thursday, extending the decline for a sixth year.
The National Center for Health Statistics reported Thursday that there were 3.93 million births in the United States in 2013, down slightly from 3.95 million in 2012, but 9 percent below the high in 2007.
According to the report, the general fertility rate in the United States — the average number of babies women from 15 to 44 bear over their lifetime — dropped to a record low last year, to 1.86 babies, well below the 2.1 needed for a stable population. For every 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, there were 62.5 births in 2013, compared with 63 the previous year.
The decline is especially notable because the number of women in their prime childbearing years, 20 to 39, has been growing since 2007.
Some demographers said the numbers were not cause for concern.
“Americans haven’t worried much about birthrates in the past, because we have the faucet of immigration to turn on and off,” said Andrew J. Cherlin, a family demographer at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s a bigger problem in Europe, where countries like Germany and Spain have much lower rates. And even at 1.8, we’re in the ballpark with the highest rates in Europe.”
American women’s rates of childlessness, he said, will probably become comparable to those of the Great Depression, when about one-fifth of women did not have children.
William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, also related the fertility rates to the economy.
“On just about every demographic indicator involving young adults, whether it’s marriage, buying a home or delaying childbearing, it’s all been on hold since the beginning of the recession,” he said. “I think it’ll come back up, and each time new numbers are coming out, I think maybe this will be the moment.”
In large part, the statistics reflect a broad shift, with more women delayingpregnancy, often past their prime childbearing years.
So while the teenage birthrate has dropped substantially, and the birthrate for women in their 20s has been declining as well, births to older women are on the rise. Although women older than 44 are not counted in the nation’s general fertility rate — fewer than one in a thousand such women have a baby each year — the report found a 14 percent increase in births to women ages 45-49.
Twin births are increasingly common, now representing about one in every 30 babies born in the United States. And preterm births and cesarean-section deliveries are declining, the report found. White women, who once had the highest rates of cesarean deliveries, now have the lowest rate, and the largest decline, while black women have the highest. Hispanic women, who formerly had the lowest rate, now have slightly more C-sections than white women.
The data from the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, came from birth certificates.
