According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the general fertility rate in the United States continued to decline last year.
The report, published on Wednesday, mentioned, “The 2018 general fertility rate fell to another all-time low for the United States.”
Researchers found that the fertility rate decreased 2 percent from 2017 to 2018 among girls and women aged 15 to 44 nationwide.
In January, a separate report was released by the National Center for Health Statistics, which said that the total fertility rate for the United States dropped under what is necessary to sustain our population levels and women are not making enough babies.
For the new report, the researchers looked at the birth certificate data from the National Vital Statistics System’s Natality Data File. They took a close look at births among white, black and Hispanic women in 2018.
The data showed that the fertility rate declined 2 percent for white and black women and 3 percent for Hispanic women from 2017 to 2018. The data also showed that the teen birth rate (aged 15 to 19) fell 7 percent between 2017 and 2018. When examined by race, the teen birthrate declined by 4 percent for black teenagers and 8 percent for white and Hispanic teenagers.
In May, Dr. Rahul Gupta, chief medical and health officer for March of Dimes, said, “Overall, a rise in preterm births might be linked with a rise in births among women in their late 30s and 40s, since a later maternal age is a risk factor.” He was not part of the new report.
“The continuing shift toward increased maternal age at first birth is something that does increase the risk. However, it does not fully explain the increase in the preterm birth rate. So that’s one of the challenges here, I think, for the nation,” said Dr. Gupta. “There is a lot more work that needs to be done as the preterm birth rate continues to rise,” added the chief medical officer.
