rate of Americans giving birth slightly dropped last year as the nation continues to see fewer babies born than it did before the pandemic.

According to the CDC, there were over 3.6 million children born in 2022.

That's 3,000 fewer than the year before and 15% below the peak.

It in 2007, which saw over 4.3 million births.

But the data also highlights an ongoing shift in the age of those giving birth.

Birth rates among moms in their teens and early 20s dropped to another record low in 2022. The rates among those in their mid-30s and

40s having babies increased. For more on this I am joined by Bradley Sherman.

He is the author of The Super Age decoding our demographic destiny.

So why are we seeing this decrease in U.S. births?

This decrease has been happening for over 250 years, but it's only in the past 25 years that we've really paid attention to it.

And it's for a multitude of reasons. Industrialization is a big one of them.

Moving to urban areas is another. Obviously the

education of women is a big part of it, but in today's modern context economics

play a large role. It's hard for women, in fact hard for families in general to justify

having babies right now because the cost is too high. So we have to modify our

systems in order to up that birth rate if we want to.

But on the other hand, a fewer teen births is not necessarily bad news in fact.

No, it's actually a success story. This is decades long of education and

prevention, birth control, and making sure that teens in particular know that

they have an option to wait until later life to have children.

Obviously these upper end births women who are 35 40 plus are part of the scientific

revolution. The fact that these pregnancies just a few decades ago

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