U.S. BIRTHS ROSE IN 2021, BUT LESS THAN PRE-PANDEMIC
U.S. births bumped up last year, but the number of babies born was still lower than before the coronavirus pandemic.
The small 1 percent increase was a bit of a rebound from 2020, the first year of the pandemic, which witnessed the largest one-year drop in the U.S. births in nearly 50 years.
But there were still about 86,000 fewer births last year than in 2019, according to a government report released today.
“We’re still not returning to pre-pandemic levels,” said Dr. Denise Jamieson, chair of gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine.
Officials think last year’s uptick reflects births from pregnancies that had been put off during the early days of the pandemic. Deliveries were way down in January 2021, but improved as the year went on, said Brady Hamilton of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Much of the increase was seen in older moms. Some of the key findings:
• Nearly 3.7 million births were reported last year, up from the roughly 3.6 million recorded in 2020.
• Birth rates dropped for teens and for women younger than 25, but rose 3 percent for women in their early 30s, 5 percent for women in their late 30s, and 3 percent for women in their early 40s.
• Birth rates rose 1 percent for Hispanic women and 3 percent for White women. But they fell 1 percent for Asian women, 3 percent for Black women, and 4 percent Native American and Alaska Native women. That may reflect the pandemic’s harsher impact on the health and lives of some racial groups, experts said.