US birthrate goes up slightly in 2021

The birthrate in the United States went up slightly last year, ending a decline that had been a constant decline since 2014, the federal government reported on Tuesday.

The country recorded 56.6 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 2021, an increase of 1 percent from the year before, when there was a sharp drop, according to provisional data released by the National Vital Statistics System, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, there were 3,659, 289 births, an increase of 46,000, or 1 percent, from 2020.

The birthrate had declined by an average of 2 percent every year since 2014.

The question of how the pandemic has affected the birthrate was muddled by the figures. Early evidence from 2020, when births dropped 4 percent from the previous year, suggested that women might have been delaying pregnancy.

The birthrate is just one piece of the larger population puzzle. The population of the country has expanded slowly over the past decade, with low birthrates, declining immigration and rising deaths. High birthrates can lead to a crunch of resources, as in the post-war baby boom years, while low birth rates can leave a country with too few people to take over jobs or care for its older population.