Historic low birth rates registered in the US
New CDC data show fertility has fallen below even Depression-era levels, raising fresh questions about family stability and long-term decline
According to vital statistics data published in April by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the birth rate in the United States has reached a new record low. In 2025, there were 53.1 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age (15-44) in the US, 1.3% lower than in 2024 and 23% lower than in 2007. The decline in birth rates reflects the impact of decades of social change that have undermined the institution of the American family.
Today, the total number of births per year is far lower than in earlier periods, when the US population was much smaller. For example, in 1961, 4.3 million children were born when the US population stood at 184 million. In 2025, only 3.6 million children were born across the entire country, even though the population now stands at 342 million.
It should also be recalled that even during the Great Depression, when the number of births fell sharply (from 119.8 births per 1,000 women in 1921 to 75.8 births per 1,000 women in 1936), the US birth rate was still higher than it is today.
The fundamental decline in fertility in American society began in the 1960s, as a result of the sexual revolution, which seduced young people with the freedom to satisfy their sexual desires while simultaneously encouraging freedom from following God’s design to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28).
In the 1990s and early 2000s, when the US reached the peak of its geopolitical power, the country experienced some growth in birth rates. But from 2006 onward, a new wave of decline began – one that is now unfolding in parallel with a rapid drop in the share of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) in the US population. Why is this happening?
An analysis of the dynamics of social well-being in the US shows how the metropolis of the globalized West, having become the supreme beneficiary of the drain of capital, brains, and ambitious youth from around the world, quickly turned into a global epicenter of social anomie. Today, the viability of the fractured American nation is sustained through the assimilation of outside resources – every resource the imperial elite can reach in a desperate attempt to “make America great again.” Yet the well-being of the “exceptional nation” is dissipating inexorably, like smoke.