Baby Bust: US births continue their decline

[Tender Branson]

Good. Hopefully they go down further.

The US still has ca. a 1 million birth surplus and a lot of immigration.

Besides, a stagnation or declining population is actually something that we should strive for - so the US has a long way to go.

A growing population just leads to more capitalism, consuming and destruction of the planet.

[Tender Branson]

Q1 data is out for US, the number of births per 1000 among women aged 15-44 dropped from 57.2 in Q1 2018 to 55.6, falling by 3% in Q1 2019 which is a new record low for the US. If fertility were to drop by 3% for the rest of the year, US fertility in 2019 would go down to 1.68 from 1.73 in 2018, first time it would have fallen below 1.7

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/natality-dashboard.htm#

In Austria it is the same thing.

After births increased "by a lot" during 2015-16 (immigration wave from the Middle East/Africa*), they are now falling again.

http://www.statistik.at/web_en/statistics/PeopleSociety/population/births/028950.html

In Q1, 2019 births are down 3.1% compared with Q1, 2018.

In Q2, 2019 births were down 2.6% compared with Q2, 2018.

Link to 1st half 2019 numbers

* births also increased among mothers with Austrian citizenship during these 2 years, so it was not exclusively because of immigration.

[Tender Branson]

Birth/Death data for European countries are more up to date than the US data and if the trends here are an indicator, then fertility will be roughly the same as last year - maybe a bit lower.

While fertility rates dropped by 3% in the 1st quarter in the US, that was the case here as well - but picked up some speed during the summer and could be relatively unchanged for the year.

I expect some 3.74-3.78 million births this year (2018: 3.79 million)

For mortality rates, it is the exact opposite: Q1, 2018 had a lot of deaths (flu season ?), while Q1, 2019 had much fewer deaths. In the US and in Europe. Over the summer, the rate of decline became less and less and by September, more deaths have been recorded than last year. Still, deaths should drop by 2-5% this year overall.

I expect about 2.75 million deaths for the US this year (2018: 2.83 million)

Which means the natural increase will probably be higher than 1 million again, after dropping below 1 million for the first time in 2018.

[Tender Branson]

From Jan.-Sept. 2019, births in Austria decreased by 2.3% and deaths decreased by 2.5%, which will be very similar to the trend in the US this year.

My state, Salzburg, is the only state with an increase in births (and deaths are down as well).

There were 37.800 marriages in the first 3 quarters, of which 860 were gay marriages (2.3%).

Link 1 (PDF)
Link 2 (PDF)