WEDNESDAY, May 5, 2021 (HealthDay News) — There was a decrease in the provisional number of births in 2020, and more New York City residents gave birth out of the city in 2020, according to two reports published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Brady E. Hamilton, Ph.D., from the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, and colleagues present provisional 2020 data on U.S. births based on 99.87 percent of all 2020 birth records received and processed by the National Center for Health Statistics. The researchers found that the provisional number of births in 2020 was 3,605,201, which was 4 percent lower than in 2019. Per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 years, the general fertility rate was 55.8 births, down 4 percent from 2019 to a record low.
Elizabeth C. W. Gregory, M.P.H., also from the National Center for Health Statistics, and colleagues describe changes between 2019 and 2020 in the percentage of New York City residents giving birth outside of New York City. The researchers found that the percentage of births that occurred outside the city increased from 2019 to 2020 for all months from March to November, varying from an increase of 15 to 70 percent for September and April. In April and May, out-of-city births peaked (10.2 and 10.3 percent, respectively) versus 2019 levels (6.0 and 6.2 percent, respectively). The percentage of out-of-city births was almost 2.5-fold higher for non-Hispanic White women in 2020 versus 2019 in April (15.6 versus 6.6 percent) and May (15.8 versus 6.5 percent); increases were less pronounced for non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic residents.
“The timing of the increases in these out-of-city births corresponds with the height of the early pandemic in NYC,” Gregory and colleagues write.
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