U.S. births declined by 4% in 2020, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC’s provisional data counted 3.6 million births in 2020, down from 3.75 million births in 2019 and 3.8 million in 2018, CNN reported Wednesday.
Births had been falling nearly 2% a year for some time, but 2020 had a greater decline, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reported.
CDC researchers wrote in the report that last year’s decline was the largest since 1973, and the number of births fell for all states and D.C. in the second half of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, according to CNN.
The researchers also reported racial disparities among births, finding that declines in the numbers of births each month from 2019 to 2020 were greater among women of color, CNN reported.