The birth rates of several of the world’s largest nations have started to drop. Japan is one case in point. The size of its entire population may actually start to fall in the coming decades. Its current birth rate is only 1.4. Even China has a problem. The world’s largest nation by population is home to over 1.3 billion people. It had a “one child per couple” policy because its population was growing so fast–until recently. The is up to a “three child policy” now that the rate of births has slowed. China faces an aging population and will have to support more seniors in retirement. The huge number of people it needs for factory work is also at risk.

An aging population causes other difficulties. National medical costs rise as people reach their 70s, 80s, and 90s. More and more people have heart disease, cancer, and dementia. The uptick in the financial burden this causes will be shouldered in many nations, which includes the U.S. Some experts believe the American trend for smaller families, which has increased in the last several decades will not change, although the end of the COVID-19 pandemic might alter that as people who put off children start to have them.

To identify the states where the most children were born in 2020, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed provisional data on the total number of births, by state of residence, from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics’ Vital Statistics Rapid Release in May 2021.

With COVID-19 vaccines being distributed across the country and pandemic death rates dropping, some experts have speculated that the birth rate will rise in 2021, as couples who put off pregnancies now being willing to move forward.

The state with the fewest children born last year is Michigan where the total number of births per 100,000 people in 2020 was 38.5. Births last year were only 3,846. Its population in 2020 was 10,077,331.

Click here to see which states had the highest birth rates in 2020.

Get Our Free Investment Newsletter

I have read, and agree to the Terms of Use

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.