To the surprise of many, the baby bust is deepening. The number of births fell by 92,000 between 2016 and 2017–from 3.946 million to 3.853 million, the lowest number in 30 years. This is the largest annual decline since 2010, when the nation was struggling to recover from the Great Recession.
No state was immune from the baby bust in 2017. Well, maybe one: Tennessee was the only state in which births did not decline in 2017. But the rise in births was so small (just 36) that the percent increase rounded to 0.0.
Looking at the longer trends in births during the baby bust—from 2007 (the year births peaked) to 2017—only North Dakota and the District of Columbia have seen an increase. But they did not make gains in 2017. The number of births in North Dakota fell 5.7 percent during the year, making it the third biggest loser of 2017, after Alaska (–7.0 percent) and Wyoming (–6.6 percent). The District of Columbia experienced a 3.2 percent drop in births in 2017—larger than the 2.3 percent decline nationally.
Twenty-three states experienced a bigger decline in births between 2016 and 2017 than the 2.3 percent national loss. Among them are Arizona, California, Colorado, Texas, and Utah. Only seven states experienced declines of less than 1 percent between 2016 and 2017. As you might expect, most are in the rapidly growing South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina), but Ohio and Massachusetts are also on the list.
Source: Demo Memo analysis of National Center for Health Statistics Birth Data
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