Births in the United States are still down, but they 'might be recovering to pre-pandemic levels,' according to preliminary CDC data.

Researchers from the National Center for Health Statistics discovered that in the first half of 2021, compared to the same period in 2020, the number of births in the United States fell by 9% in January and 2% in February, but then rose non-significantly by less than 1% in March and 1% in April, fell by 1% in May, and rose by 3% in June.

Mar 2, 2022 - 11:35 Updated: Mar 2, 2022 - 12:17

Births in the United States are still down, but they 'might be recovering to pre-pandemic levels,' according to preliminary CDC data.

According to a new federal assessment, the overall number of newborns born in the United States is continuing to decline, but "maybe reverting to pre-pandemic levels" today.

According to the new National Center for Health Statistics report released Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, births in the United States fell 2% in the first half of 2021 compared to the same period the previous year. The first half of 2020 saw the same drop in births, and the second half of 2020 saw a 5% drop in births.

When looking at the data month by month, however, "you start to see the decline lessen as you go through 2021, and, for the last few months of that first half of 2021, there's an increase compared to that month last year," Brady Hamilton, a statistician at NCHS and one of the report's authors, told CNN.

Researchers from the National Center for Health Statistics discovered that in the first half of 2021, compared to the same period in 2020, the number of births in the United States fell by 9% in January and 2% in February, but then rose non-significantly by less than 1% in March and 1% in April, fell by 1% in May, and rose by 3% in June.

The study comprised data on US birth records collected and processed by the National Center for Health Statistics as of September 21, 2021, from January 2019 to June 2021. The preliminary data for 2021 was compiled from 99.92 percent of all birth certificates received.
"We're certainly looking forward to obtaining the whole data set for 2021 so that we can see what happens from July to December," Hamilton added.
According to the new statistics, births decreased for all races in the first half of 2021, but there were notable variances across states.

Births fell in 19 states and Washington, DC, while they increased in four states: Connecticut, Idaho, Tennessee, and New Hampshire, according to the data. Declines in an additional 17 states were not significant, nine states reported increases that were not significant, and state-level data for Alaska was not shown in the report. Regionally, the largest declines were seen in New Mexico at 5% and Washington, DC, at 9%.

The overall decrease in the number of US births is part of an ongoing trend, as births declined from 2015 to 2019, but "the sharp decline in births in January and a more moderate decline in February of 2021 followed by generally increasing trends beginning in March, are not consistent with those of recent years in which changes in births by month were more moderate," NCHS researchers wrote in the report.

"The amplitude of the negative trend witnessed in the second half of 2020 and January of 2021 may have begun to diminish," the researchers said, "and drops in the number of births may be reverting to pre-pandemic levels." "However, continuous analysis of birth statistics by month will continue to establish if the changes shown in the first half of 2021 will be sustained in the second half."