U.S. Fertility Rates Fall To All-Time Low

VPM | By Scott Hensley

Published February 11, 2013 at 5:33 PM EST

Updated December 11, 2023

Here we go again.

The rate at which American women are having babies fell by 1 percent in 2011, continuing a decline that’s been under way for years.

There were 63.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 2011 (the lowest on record), compared with 64.1 in 2010 and 66.2 in 2009.

A deeper look at the numbers reveals some other noteworthy trends.

Births to teenagers hit another low — 31.3 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19, down from 34.2 in 2010.

Fertility rates rose a little for older women — climbing 1 percent to 10.3 births per 1,000 women aged 40 to 44 from 10.2 in 2010. The rate of births was unchanged for women aged 45 to 49.

The infant mortality rate was 6.05 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2011, about the same as the rate of 6.15 in 2010. There has been some improvement in the U.S. The rate stood at 6.91 in 2000 and 9.22 in 1990.

But the U.S. could do a whole lot better. A table that’s part of the analysis published in the latest issue of Pediatrics puts the U.S. just behind Hungary and Slovak Republic in a list of 30 nations ranked by infant mortality.

Top of the charts: Hong Kong, Japan and Finland.

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Scott Hensley

Scott Hensley edits stories about health, biomedical research and pharmaceuticals for NPR's Science desk. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has led the desk's reporting on the development of vaccines against the coronavirus.

Hensley has worked on award-winning investigations in collaboration with journalistic partners.

He was the lead NPR editor on an investigation with the Center for Public Integrity in 2018 that exposed drug industry influence on the choices of preferred medicines by Medicaid programs. The work won the 2019 Gerald Loeb Award for audio reporting.

In 2017, Hensley was the lead NPR editor on an investigation with Kaiser Health News that showed how the pharmaceutical industry exploits government incentives intended to encourage the development of treatments for rare diseases. The stories won the 2019 digital award from the National Institute for Health Care Management.

Hensley has been editing in his current role since 2019. He joined NPR in 2009 to launch Shots, a blog that expanded to become a digital destination for NPR health coverage.

Before NPR, Hensley was a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal. He was the founding editor of The Wall Street Journal Health Blog, which focused on the intersection of health and business. As a reporter, he covered the drug industry and the Human Genome Project.

Hensley served on the board of the Association of Health Care Journalists from 2012 to 2020.

He has a bachelor's degree in natural sciences from Johns Hopkins University and a master's in journalism from Columbia University.

Before becoming a journalist, Hensley worked in the medical device industry. He remains, now and forever, a lover of Dobermans, lacrosse and Callinectes sapidus.

See stories by Scott Hensley