Thanks to mothers over 40, the US birth rate has risen again

After years of devastating headlines about declining birth rates worldwide, the U.S. birth rate increased slightly in 2024, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The one percent increase in the birth rate was largely driven by mothers in their early 40s, who in 2024 gave birth to two percent more children than in 2023. Mothers in their 30s and late 20s also gave birth slightly more.

Brady Hamilton, lead author of the report, told Business Insider that the statistics are a continuation of trends from the past three decades.

„Women in their late 20s and early 40s are having more children, while those in their teens and early 20s are having fewer. These numbers support the claim that women are having children at later stages of their lives, he said regarding the birth rate.

While millennials have fewer children compared to past generations, they still have more children than Generation Z.

In 2024, the CDC revealed that women between the ages of 30 and 34 have the most children, followed by moms in their late 20s.

Emily Oster, founder of ParentData.org, bestselling author, and economics professor at Brown University, told BI that CDC data points to two major trends.

One is that people are choosing to have children later: fertility peaks in the early twenties, but women in that age group have fewer children than those who gave birth in the 1990s.

At the same time, the development of medicine has given people greater control over when they have children, if they have them at all, Oster said.

The birth rate among teenagers continues to fall as access to contraception has increased. At the same time, in vitro fertilization allows women to get pregnant in their 40s.

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