MONDAY, March 10, 2025 (HealthDay News) — From 1990 to 2023, there was a decrease in the number of births and in general and total fertility rates (GFRs and TFRs), according to the March 6 National Vital Statistics Reports, a publication from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Anne K. Driscoll, Ph.D., and Brady E. Hamilton, Ph.D., from the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, and colleagues used information from birth data files from 1990 through 2023 to estimate the role of changes in age-specific fertility rates on total births, GFRs, and TFRs.

The researchers found that from 1990 to 2023, there was a 14 percent decline in the actual number of U.S. births, a 23 percent decline in GFR, and a 22 percent decline in TFR. Holding the 1990 birth rates constant for women younger than 30 years would have resulted in higher adjusted GFRs, TFRs, and numbers of births in 2023 than the actual rates and numbers due to declines in birth rates among women in this age bracket. The magnitude of this decrease was greater than the magnitude of the increase in rates among women aged 30 years and older, resulting in an overall decrease in fertility rates. These changes resulted in changing maternal age distributions; women younger than 30 years accounted for 69.8 and 48.6 percent of births in 1990 and 2023, respectively.

“The decline in fertility rates over the past few decades results from declining rates among females younger than 30 that are offset somewhat by smaller increases in rates among older women,” the authors write.

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