Where births are falling

Mothers living in the 578578 countiesEstimandcount of countiesWeightsnone (full count)Populationcounties that WONDER natality identifies in every year from 2018 to 2024 and that have birthsPeriodbirths in 2018 to 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality counties that CDC WONDER names on their own had 3.02 million3.02 million live birthsEstimandcount of live birthsWeightsnone (full count)Populationlive births in the counties that CDC WONDER natality identifies in every year (counties with 100,000 or more residents in the population vintage WONDER uses)Period2018SourceCDC WONDER natality babies in 2018. In 2024 the same counties recorded 2.88 million2.88 million live birthsEstimandcount of live birthsWeightsnone (full count)Populationlive births in the counties that CDC WONDER natality identifies in every year (counties with 100,000 or more residents in the population vintage WONDER uses)Period2024SourceCDC WONDER natality births, a decline of 4.6%4.6% percent of 2018 birthsEstimandfall in the count of births from 2018 to 2024Weightsnone (full count)Populationlive births in the counties that CDC WONDER natality identifies in every year (counties with 100,000 or more residents in the population vintage WONDER uses)Period2018 to 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality. WONDER names a county only when it had 100,000100,000 residentsEstimandpopulation size at which WONDER identifies a county, applied to an earlier population vintage than the 2020 census (a definition)Weightsnone (definition)Populationcounties that CDC WONDER natality identifiesPeriodbirths in 2018 to 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality or more residents in the population estimate it uses, and the chapter calls these the named counties. Each birth is counted in the county where the mother lives.

Births in the named counties have not returned to 2018

Births in the named counties fell from 2018 to 2020 and rose through 2022. They fell again in 2023, to the lowest level from 2018 to 2024, when they were 5.5%5.5% percent of 2018 birthsEstimandfall in the count of births from 2018 to 2023Weightsnone (full count)Populationlive births in the counties that CDC WONDER natality identifies in every year (counties with 100,000 or more residents in the population vintage WONDER uses)Period2018 to 2023SourceCDC WONDER natality below 2018, and they rose in 2024 without reaching the 2018 level. WONDER pools the births of every smaller county in a state into one row. Births in those pooled rows fell by 3.0%3.0% percent of 2018 birthsEstimandfall in the count of births in the pooled rows from 2018 to 2024Weightsnone (full count)Populationlive births in the counties that WONDER natality does not name, which it pools within each statePeriod2018 to 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality over the same years, so the named counties lost a larger share of their births than the rest of the country combined. The pooled rows include counties that have since grown past WONDER's line, so the comparison is between two groups defined by an earlier population estimate and not by size today.

How we know

The counts come from CDC WONDER natality for births in 2018 to 2024, placed by the mother's county of residence, and 2024 is final in these data. The named counties are those WONDER identifies in every one of those years and that have births in every year. Together they recorded 79.4%79.4% percent of live births in the United StatesEstimandshare of births in the named countiesWeightsnone (full count)Populationlive births in the 50 states and DCPeriod2024SourceCDC WONDER natality of the births in the United States in 2024. No county enters or leaves the panel between 2018 and 2024. WONDER applies its threshold to a population estimate earlier than the 2020 Census, and by 2020 Census population 2727 countiesEstimandcount of unnamed counties with a 2020 Census population of at least the thresholdn3,135 countiesWeightsnone (full count)Populationcounties outside Connecticut that WONDER pools although their 2020 Census population is 100,000 or morePeriod2020 CensusSourceCDC WONDER natality counties outside Connecticut that are above the line are still in the pooled rows. Every number in the chapter is a count of births or a share of births, never a birth rate. A rate divides births by the women who could have had them, and the files behind this book have no county counts of women by age. Because births are full counts, the intervals come from a bootstrapBootstrap intervalA range for an estimate found by recomputing it on many random resamples of the data and reading the range from the results. It shows how much the estimate would vary from sample to sample. that resamples whole counties, and they show how much a pooled change depends on which counties a group holds. The report gives every estimate with its interval and sample size.

Births fell among younger mothers and rose among older ones

The decline in the named counties is not spread evenly over mothers' ages. From 2018 to 2024, births fell by 24.6% (95% CI 22.7% to 26.5%)24.6% percent of 2018 birthsEstimandpooled change in the count of births from 2018 to 2024, bootstrap interval over countiesInterval95% CI 22.7% to 26.5%n577 countiesWeightsbirths in each county (a pooled ratio of sums over counties); interval from a bootstrap over countiesPopulationlive births to mothers aged 15 to 19 in the named counties that publish the band in both yearsPeriodbirths in 2018 and 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality among mothers aged 15 to 1915 to 19 years of ageEstimandage-of-mother range used in this chapter, from WONDER's five-year bands (a definition)Weightsnone (definition)PopulationmothersPeriodall years (a definition)SourceCDC WONDER natality and rose by 19.5% (95% CI 17.0% to 22.3%)19.5% percent of 2018 birthsEstimandpooled change in the count of births from 2018 to 2024, bootstrap interval over countiesInterval95% CI 17.0% to 22.3%n578 countiesWeightsbirths in each county (a pooled ratio of sums over counties); interval from a bootstrap over countiesPopulationlive births to mothers aged 40 to 44 in the named counties that publish the band in both yearsPeriodbirths in 2018 and 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality among mothers aged 40 to 4440 to 44 years of ageEstimandage-of-mother range used in this chapter, from WONDER's five-year bands (a definition)Weightsnone (definition)PopulationmothersPeriodall years (a definition)SourceCDC WONDER natality. Between those two bands the changes climb with age (Figure 2). The overall decline in these counties therefore combines falls among younger mothers with gains among older ones. The shift continues a rise in the mean age of mothers that the National Center for Health Statistics documented for every birth order from 2000 to 2014.[1]

These are births and not birth rates. A fall in births to the youngest band of mothers shown can mean fewer births per teenager or fewer teenagers in the county, and these data cannot tell the two apart.

Births held up in the South, except in its most deprived counties

The Census Bureau groups states into the Northeast, the Midwest, the South and the West. Pooled over its named counties, the South's births changed by 0.0% (95% CI −1.7% to 1.8%)0.0% percent of 2018 birthsEstimandpooled change in the count of births from 2018 to 2024, bootstrap interval over countiesInterval95% CI −1.7% to 1.8%n232 countiesWeightsbirths in each county (a pooled ratio of sums over counties); interval from a bootstrap over countiesPopulationlive births in the named counties in the Census South regionPeriodbirths in 2018 and 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality from 2018 to 2024, an interval that includes zero. In the Midwest, the West and the Northeast the intervals for the change lie below zero.

Counties can also be ordered by the deprivation of their neighborhoods. Each census tract has a national rank on the Area Deprivation IndexArea Deprivation Index (ADI)A score that ranks neighborhoods by income, education, employment and housing conditions drawn from the American Community Survey. In this book a higher national percentile means a more deprived neighborhood., with a higher rank meaning more deprived.[2] A county's rank is the average of its tracts' ranks weighted by population, and the named counties are split into quartiles that hold equal numbers of counties. The most deprived quartile is therefore relative to large counties and not to the nation. Pooled births fell by 5.6%5.6% percent of 2018 birthsEstimandfall in the pooled count of births from 2018 to 2024, bootstrap interval over countiesInterval95% CI 2.8% to 8.2%n144 countiesWeightsbirths in each county (a pooled ratio of sums over counties); interval from a bootstrap over countiesPopulationlive births in the least deprived quartile of the named counties by county Area Deprivation Index rankPeriodbirths in 2018 and 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality in the least deprived quartile and by 7.3%7.3% percent of 2018 birthsEstimandfall in the pooled count of births from 2018 to 2024, bootstrap interval over countiesInterval95% CI 5.8% to 8.8%n145 countiesWeightsbirths in each county (a pooled ratio of sums over counties); interval from a bootstrap over countiesPopulationlive births in the most deprived quartile of the named counties by county Area Deprivation Index rankPeriodbirths in 2018 and 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality in the most deprived.

The losses do not rise in steps with deprivation. The most deprived quartile lost 4.5 percentage points (95% CI 2.3 percentage points to 6.7 percentage points)4.5 percentage points percentage pointsEstimanddifference of two pooled falls in the count of births, shared bootstrap draws over countiesInterval95% CI 2.3 percentage points to 6.7 percentage pointsn578 countiesWeightsbirths in each county (a pooled ratio of sums over counties); interval from a bootstrap over countiesPopulationlive births in the named counties, fall in births for the most deprived quartile minus the second and third quartiles togetherPeriodbirths in 2018 and 2024SourceCDC WONDER natality more than the second and third quartiles together. The least deprived quartile's differences from the middle quartiles and from the most deprived quartile both have intervals that include zero, so the data do not place it with either.

Region and deprivation overlap, so the chapter looks at them together (Figure 3). The most deprived quartile lost births in every region. The South's flat total therefore combines a loss in its most deprived counties with no clear change in its other three quartiles together. The index measures neighborhoods averaged to counties, and it understates deprivation in high-cost cities, so some counties in the least deprived quartile hold neighborhoods more deprived than their rank suggests.

What the county pattern describes

Birth rates in the United States have been falling since the Great Recession. Kearney, Levine and Pardue document that birth rates fell between 2007 and 2020 across many groups of women.[3] This chapter starts in 2018 and describes where the recent loss of births fell among large counties. Its patterns describe counties and groups of births, not the mothers in any one county. A county's births change when women have fewer children, when the number of women of childbearing age changes, or both, and these data cannot separate them. A county that adds young families counts their births, so a gain in a fast-growing county may reflect arrivals as much as larger families.

What these counts cannot tell you

Without county counts of women by age, the chapter computes no birth rates, so a county's change in births is not a measure of its fertility. The named counties are not a sample of the country. WONDER's county files used here have no cut by the mother's race or Hispanic origin, so the chapter cannot say whether the shift in mothers' ages differs by group. The comparison uses the endpoint years 2018 and 2024 only, and a county's direction of change is better established than its rank among the named counties.

Go deeper

• The report: every estimate with its interval and sample size.
• Tables: every figure of the report as a table.

Data sources

• CDC WONDER natalityCDC WONDER natality, county totals and county by mother's age, births in 2018 to 2024 (consolidated pulls); 2024 is finalYears: 2018-2024 · Weights: births in each county (pooled ratios of sums); changes and shares pooled over counties · License: Public domain (NCHS, CDC); WONDER data-use restrictions apply
• Area Deprivation IndexNeighborhood Atlas Area Deprivation Index 2023 (v4.0.1), tract national rank, averaged to counties with 2019-2023 tract populationYears: 2023 release (version 4.0.1; built on ACS 2019-2023) · Weights: 2019-2023 tract population · License: Free for non-commercial use; cite the Neighborhood Atlas and Kind and Buckingham

All data sources

References

1. Mathews, T. J.; Hamilton, Brady E. (2016). Mean Age of Mothers is on the Rise: United States, 2000-2014. NCHS Data Brief No. 232. www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db232.htm
2. Kind, Amy J. H.; Buckingham, William R. (2018). Making Neighborhood-Disadvantage Metrics Accessible: The Neighborhood Atlas. New England Journal of Medicine 378(26): 2456-2458. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1802313
3. Kearney, Melissa S.; Levine, Phillip B.; Pardue, Luke (2022). The Puzzle of Falling US Birth Rates since the Great Recession. Journal of Economic Perspectives 36(1): 151-176. doi:10.1257/jep.36.1.151

How to cite

@misc{singh2026wherebirthsarefalling,
  author = {Singh, Vishal},
  title = {Where births are falling},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://vishalsingh.org/zipcode/where-births-are-falling},
  note = {In ZIP Code Destiny. Published 9 October 2026.}
}