While Kentucky had more deaths than births in 2023, according to preliminary data, deaths declined.  This is thanks, in large part, to the overall decrease in COVID-19 deaths following years of spikes during the pandemic, according to Matthew H. Ruther, the director of the Kentucky State Data Center (KSDC).  With the public health emergency chapter of the COVID-19 pandemic over, Ruther, who is also a University of Louisville professor, said the state is trending back to normality with its death total.  Matthew H. Ruther Kentucky births, meanwhile, continue a steady decline thanks to multiple factors, including the cost of having and raising a child.  Comparing deaths and births  In 2023, there were 53,262 deaths in Kentucky — down from 57,069 in 2022.  “Where we are now would be where we would have expected to be if COVID hadn’t hit,” said Ruther. “So there’s this … peak in 2021, and then it’s gone back down.”  Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that in 2023 there were never more than 81 weekly COVID-19 deaths in Kentucky. In 2022, the state once had 425 deaths in a week, and in 2021 the deadliest week saw 451 lives lost to COVID-19.  Births in Kentucky also declined — from 52,318 in 2022 to 51,992 in 2023, according to Ruther.  The number of  births and deaths in Kentucky has steadily grown closer, according to KSDC data going back to 1960. From then until 2020, there were always more annual births than deaths, a trend that reversed in 2020 and has continued since then. More people are dying, and fewer are having babies.  Births and deaths in Kentucky from 1960 to 2023. (Kentucky State Data Center) Kentucky’s fertility rate — the hypothetical average number of children per woman — is 1.8, which is higher than the national rate of 1.6, but not quite to the “replacement” benchmark of about two children per woman.  “What you’re looking for is a fertility rate around a little bit more than two, because this is what’s known as ‘replacement fertility,’” Ruther explained. “Two people have two babies and so they replace themselves in the population. So, we’re a little bit lower than replacement fertility.”  The gap between births and deaths “was closing and closing and closing, and then COVID hit, and then deaths … blew up way higher than births,” Ruther said. “And now that deaths are coming back down a little bit … the gap is narrowing, but only because COVID deaths are going down. And in the future, we would expect it to start widening again.” Social factors often contribute to birthing trends, Ruther said. Recently, the high cost of having a child — buying food and paying for child care — are barriers to having a biological child.  The trend affects Kentucky rather evenly, Ruther said; about 75% of the state’s counties have more deaths than births.  ‘Deaths of despair’ plus reluctance to have children  Jason Bailey, the executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, said life expectancy for working class Kentuckians has worsened, which concerns him.   Jason Bailey “A less healthy population obviously means a smaller workforce. It means a lower quality of life, and all the things that you want out of a good and prosperous state,” he said. “So it’s a key concern for quality life and for economic vitality that people are dying earlier, and we’re sort of a ground zero for deaths of despair related to drugs and alcohol and suicide and other … poor health indicators.”  An August 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed life expectancy at birth for Kentuckians was an average of 72 years, the fifth worst state.  “The other end of the spectrum that’s also concerning is the evidence that suggests that people are reluctant to have children, in part because of costs associated with that, whether that be child care, housing, higher education and then the wages that they have,” said Bailey.  Kentucky’s population shifted older in a decade. Here’s how and why it matters. Child care issues were a recurring theme during the 2024 legislative session. With federal COVID-19 dollars that helped stabilize the industry during the last few years running out, centers were left to cut pay for their workers, raise tuition for parents and even close. This put a strain on an already struggling industry.  “If people can’t afford to have kids that want to have children, that obviously affects their quality of life, but it feeds into a workforce challenge,” Bailey said.  He pointed to the Baby Boomer generation, conceived in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Baby Boomers are those born between 1946–1964.  During that time, Bailey said, “there was a sense of optimism about the future. People felt like their lives were getting better, their jobs were getting better, and that contributes to it as well. I think there are a lot of people in their 20s now that don’t see a lot of future. They’re working dead end jobs in the service sector. They don’t see a career ladder of opportunities, and that contributes to the decisions they make about family formation.”   Charles Aull Charles Aull, the executive director of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Center for Policy and Research, said the “sheer size of the baby boomer generation” means higher death rates at this time are not surprising. “Those folks have transitioned into the retirement periods, for the most part, and then following those retirement periods will eventually be deaths,” Aull said. “And that was a very, very large generation. And then generations that have followed have just had less babies.”   This will continue to cause “economic strain,” he said, as there are more people needing services like health care, and fewer people in the workforce to provide such services.  “When it comes to population growth, immigration will increasingly play a larger role,” Aull said.  Immigration offsets natural population loss  Kentucky’s population loss from a decline in births is being offset by immigration, Ruther said, both internationally and from other states.  Immigration drives nation’s population growth “That is offsetting the losses that we’re seeing — the natural decline that we see,” Ruther said. Immigration in Kentucky is boosting population growth mainly in Louisville, Lexington, Northern Kentucky and Bowling Green, he said.  The United States Census Bureau estimated Kentucky’s population at 4,339,367 in 2010, which increased to 4,526,154 in 2023 and 4,588,372 in 2024. From 2020 to 2024, according to the Census, the population increased nearly 2%.  From 2019-2023, about 4% of Kenmtucky’s population was foreign born, according to Census data.  “Immigration is going to continue being an important part of how we grow our workforce,” Aull said. “But it also goes back to why it’s so important to remove barriers to work. If there’s a Kentuckian out there who wants to work but faces some sort of obstacle, it’s becoming increasingly important that we figure out ways to remove that obstacle.”  From 2019 to 2023, there were about 2.5 people per household and 1,791,991 households in Kentucky, according to Census data.  “The competition among states for talented workers and for just workers in general, that’ll probably intensify, especially if we do anything to slow down legal immigration into the country, that will create added pressure on states to compete for talent,” Aull said. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to crack down the border and begin mass deportations of immigrants who are here without visas. “Having things like a competitive tax code, having a strong housing market where people can actually move to the state and afford a home, that stuff is just going to become increasingly more important,” said Aull, “because we’re just going to need more people in the workforce as we see more and more retirees and more people that are dependent on goods and services, but they can’t work.”  Kentucky’s economic outlook is “concerning” to Bailey at the moment, “but I think it’s important that we have the right diagnosis of it,” he said.  “We want people to live full and healthy lives, and we want people to have options to have children if that’s something they would like to do,” he said. “And increasingly, those things aren’t happening. We’re dying earlier, despite having the medical technologies that should be able to keep us living longer, and we’re not having children, in some cases because … we can’t afford it, we don’t see it as a viable option because of our economic circumstances. Those aren’t things we should be facing in the richest country in the world.”  YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE. The post Kentucky deaths still outnumber births though gap narrows. Here’s why. appeared first on The Lexington Times.