The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and new federal data shows that another drop last year brought the rate down to the lowest on record.About 3.6 million babies were born in the US in 202 5, according to provisional data published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 53 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age. That rate is down about 1% from 2024 and nearly 20% lower than it was two decades ago.A pronatalist movement has gained momentum under the Trump administration, buoyed by policy moves geared toward encouraging people to have more children.Experts generally agree that a falling fertility rate can have real consequences particularly related to the economy but say its important to understand the reasons behind the decline before trying to change it.Instead of targeting the rate itself, we should frame it as a person-forward approach, said Dr. Alison Gemmill, an associate professor of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health whose research focuses on US fertility patterns and other reproductive health topics.RELATED STORY | The number that moves markets every month just got a new formula. Here's what changed.Our world and our lives are complex, she said. There are so many factors that people consider when making decisions about how and when to start a family, and they all matter.Overall, women in the US are waiting until later in life to have children. Between 2024 and 2025, birth rates ticked up among women 30 and older but not enough to offset sharper declines in birth rates among those younger than 30.This is part of a huge social change, Gemmill said.Women now have better control over their reproductive lives, so theres not as much unintended pregnancy as there used to be, she said. Our timelines have shifted.Pregnancy is also one of many life milestones that is happening later than it used to. Partnership patterns are important, Gemmill said, and people in the US are getting married later and less often than they used to.Dr. Sigal Klipstein, a specialist in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at InVia Fertility Specialists in Chicago, says that having the right partner is one of most important considerations for her patients.Its very uncommon that women say, Im a really busy professional and I just dont have time to have babies, so I want to freeze my eggs so I can focus on my career, said Kipstein, who is also a former chair of the American College of Obstetricians Gynecologists committee on ethics.The largest group is women who said they havent found the appropriate partner and dont want to have children alone, she said. Its very much that they want children, but that they want them either in the context of a family or in a context of financial security, and theyre willing to wait in the hopes that they not need to compromise.The general state of the world has also made people more deliberate about their decision to have children, Gemmill said. Concerns about climate change, the economy, artificial intelligence, health care quality and more weigh heavily on future parents.All of these things are hard to quantify, Gemmill said. The highly competitive and inequitable world that we live in has made many future parents feel that they need to give more, that parenting requires a lot more of your time and money than 20 years ago.RELATED STORY | What medical experts say pregnant women need to know about Tylenol, leucovorin and autismAn economic dragA further slowdown in the US birth rate eventually could serve as a potential drag on economic growth, said Samuel Tombs, chief US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.Any dropoff in the birth rate obviously has very little short-term implications for the economy, he said. Its more of a medium-term drag.However, the US economy has had to contend with other more sudden and stark demographic shifts. The Trump administrations policy aimed at reduced immigration and increased enforcement and deportations has resulted in a historic decline in net migration.We have gone from population growth of a bit above 1% in 2023 and 2024 to growth of just 0.3% in 2025, and that is a drop primarily being led by immigration, he said. Those people were quickly becoming employed and adding to demand in the economy.At the moment, theres still some slight organic growth in the US population to contribute to a growing of the workforce, he said.If immigration was zero, the workforce would still be growing for the next few years by just about 0.1% to 0.2% a year, he said.In turn, economic growth that was running around 2.5% is slowing to under 2%, he said.The nations birth rate is also a key factor in determining the financial health of Social Securitys trust fund. The fewer younger Americans there are, the fewer workers exist to pay into the system that supports more than 70 million retirees and others.Last year, Social Securitys trustees forecast that it would take until 2050 for the total fertility rate to hit 1.9 children per woman, a decade longer than their prior estimate. The adjustment reflects their expectation that the rate will recover relatively slowly from current low levels, but it also contributed to a worsening of the programs long-range deficit projection.RELATED STORY | Without immigration, US suffers population decline starting in 2033, report showsAn eye on 90s babiesFor now, delaying pregnancy hasnt translated to a significant change in the rate of childlessness, or the share of women who dont have any children by the end of their reproductive years, Gemmill said.An important cohort to watch will be those born in the 1990s, who are now in their late 20s and early 30s, she said.There was a significant drop in the teen birth rate for this cohort, and it has stayed low in their early 20s.Some models suggest that to catch up, this group is going to have to have an unprecedented birth rate in their late 30s and 40s, so well be looking for that, Gemmill said. That cohort in particular will probably tell us a lot about the future of US fertility.As patterns in fertility rates change, Klipstein says, knowledge is critical. Assistive reproductive technology, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), has helped many plan for the families they want, she said, but age is still the key factor affecting fertility.Its really important for people in general, not just women, to know what happens to fertility over age and what things impact fertility so that they can make decisions, she said. Not everybody wants to have children. But if they do, they should have the information to be able to make those decisions.The-CNN-Wire 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. ...read more read less