One of the interesting statistics from the 2010 U.S. Census was their finding that the U.S. birthrate hit an all-time low in 2010.
At the time, demographers tended to blame this on the great recession and many forecast birthrates would increase as the economy got stronger.
But fertility rates didn't improve.
In fact, they got worse and steadily declined from the all-time low of 1.72 in 2010 to a new all-time low of 1.64 in 2020.
Key quote from the Washington Post's U.S. birthrate falls to its lowest level in decades in wake of pandemic:
Before the pandemic, American women were already having fewer children, doing it later in life or choosing to not have children at all. The newly released data indicated a sharpening of that trend. The U.S. birthrate fell across races, ethnicity and almost all age groups.
Falling birthrates also, obviously, means fewer births.
The chart below, from Bloomberg's U.S. Births Drop to the Lowest Level Since the 1970s, shows the impact on births from the last decade's declining birthrate.
Declining fertility and birth rates have enormous social and economic implications.
They lead to reduced economic growth, make it harder to pay for social programs (especially social security and Medicare) and cause economic dislocations due to changing demand patterns.
On the plus side, they lead to more people buying pets.
We have more on these topics in our Demographics and Pet Trends sections.
