As the data clearly shows, America is having fewer babies. In fact, since the national birth peak in 2007, total births have fallen 16%, with the general fertility rate down 22%. One key reason is the fact that U.S. moms are giving birth later.
In this study, we’ll look at the states bucking the national trend with the highest fertility rates in America. We’ll also rank the states with the highest raw birth count totals, and we’ll consider some of the pressures that influence and determine birth numbers and rates, which continue to shape our communities.
First, let’s look at a broad snapshot of America’s birth numbers.
America’s Birth Snapshot: The Numbers
Although 2024 U.S. birth numbers were up on 2023 figures (just over 3.6 million babies were born across the country, up marginally from 3,596,017), the nation’s overall fertility rate continued to decline. There’s still a huge gap between America’s highest- and lowest-birth states, and the profile of new mothers has dramatically shifted.
Younger women are avoiding early motherhood at record rates, with women in their thirties now the primary drivers of American birth activity. Additionally, there’s a growing geographic divide between states when we examine birth rates. Since the national birth peak in 2007, birth numbers are down 16%, while the general fertility rate has declined 22%. In 2024, it fell 1% to 53.8 births per 1,000 women (aged 15 to 44); the minor increase in births is driven by population size as opposed to higher rates of childbearing.
Women aged between 30 and 34 now account for the highest U.S. birth rates (93.7 births per 1,000 women), emphasizing a huge generational shift over just two decades. Overall, teen birth rates fell 4% to a record low: 12.6 births per 1,000 females aged between 15 and 19, even as parts of the South and Plains saw comparatively elevated levels.
At the other end of the spectrum, women aged between 40 and 44 were subject to a 2% birth rate increase (12.7 births per 1,000 women), continuing a gradual rise that has continued across nearly four decades.
The Six-Year Age Gap
This gradual shift away from younger motherhood varies across the country. According to a 2025 CDC report that analyzed births between 2016 and 2023, the average age of a first-time mother was 28.5 years in large metropolitan counties, and in rural counties, it was 24.8 years, a gap of nearly four years.
At the state level, there’s an even bigger divide. Washington, D.C. recorded the nation’s oldest first-time mothers (30.8 years), followed by Massachusetts (30) and New Jersey (29.4). Mississippi ranked lowest (24.5 years), followed by Arkansas (24.9) and Oklahoma (25.2), creating a gap of over six years between the oldest and youngest jurisdictions.
That six-year gap is about more than demographics. It represents broad differences in fertility rates, educational attainment, and economic outlook that increasingly define different parts of the nation.
hile delaying motherhood has been a growing habit in both urban and rural areas, the trend has accelerated fastest in major metropolitan centers. A combination of rising housing costs, longer educational pathways, and increasing career demands has pushed the average motherhood age beyond the thirty-year-old threshold.
Beyond individual mother ages, it’s worth looking at the raw birth count to see which states feature the highest number of yearly births.
Raw Birth Count Numbers: Top 10 States
When it comes to raw birth numbers, a handful of states carry a disproportionate share of the nation’s childbearing. By this measure, California and Texas are way out in front, collectively recording more than 792,000 births during 2024: that’s nearly one in every five babies born in the United States.
The gap between these two states and the rest of the country is significant: third-ranked Florida was far behind with 224,389 births, while New York rounded out the top four with 205,489 births. Florida’s ranking is notable given its aging population, while New York’s 30-to-34 age group accounted for nearly 67,000 births: more than the annual totals of some smaller states.
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, and New Jersey completed the remainder of the top ten, each featuring more than 100,000 births. North Carolina’s 122,856 births reflected its rapid population growth.
Overall, the ten highest-volume states recorded just over 1.9 million births, accounting for more than half of the national total (3,628,934). Yet total birth counts are heavily influenced by population size, meaning raw-count rankings are more illustrative of where Americans live as opposed to where women are most actively giving birth (a distinction that will become far more important when we discuss fertility rates).
At the opposite end of the number rankings, Vermont recorded the fewest births (5,023), followed by Wyoming (6,089) and the District of Columbia (7,616). Alaska’s 8,943 births reflected its small population and geographic isolation. North Dakota and Rhode Island each recorded fewer than 10,500 births, while Delaware narrowly exceeded 10,000. Montana, South Dakota, and Maine rounded out the bottom ten with between 11,300 and 11,600 births, further illustrating the consistently low birth totals across many smaller, more rural states.
The ten lowest-output states recorded a combined total of just over 93,000 births, a striking figure that’s less than a quarter of California’s annual total.
Ultimately, the birth rate question is about more than where the most babies are being born: it’s also a matter of whether enough are being born to sustain long-term population growth in large parts of the country.
And for many states, their fatality rate suggests that there are parts of America in which motherhood is thriving.
The Great Fertility Divide
If we switch focus from raw birth counts to fertility rates, the American childbearing map looks dramatically different. States that dominate total births (such as California and New York) slip out of the top tier, and are replaced by Plains, Mountain West, and Southern states that outpace the national childbearing average.
2024’s national fertility rate of 53.8 births per 1,000 women (down 1% on the prior year) serves as a useful benchmark for understanding the widening divide between America’s most and least fertile states. And it’s a gap with significant national repercussions regarding population growth, a sustainable workforce, and economic health.
South Dakota’s fertility rate of 66.73 births per 1,000 women was the nation’s highest, nearly 24% above the national average and over 26 points higher than the District of Columbia’s 39.76 (the country’s lowest rate). This 27-point spread emphatically confirms a fundamental divide regarding how women across different regions approach motherhood; it also highlights the influence of cultural, economic, and demographic forces.
Nebraska ranked second (62.90), while Alaska’s 60.82 rate reflects its younger demographic profile and historically high birth rates. North Dakota and Kentucky completed the top five (60.38 and 60.26), while Utah, historically associated with high fertility, ranked sixth (59.90). Texas, Indiana, Arkansas, and Iowa completed the top ten, confirming a geographic corridor that stretches from the South through the Midwest and Plains.
Especially notable is how strongly the top ten skews toward smaller, more rural and more socially conservative states: further hints that community and cultural factors remain closely linked to fertility rates.
The District of Columbia’s fertility rate of 39.76 (well below second-lowest Vermont’s 41.67 rate) reflects its combination of high housing costs, a transient workforce and delayed family formation.
Rhode Island (45.03) and New Hampshire (45.93) follow closely behind; in the latter case, the rate underlines New England’s long-running fertility decline. Oregon (46.06), Maine (46.30), Massachusetts (46.79) and Connecticut (48.93) extend a consistent low-rate ranking trend of Northeastern and West Coast states.
Illinois (49.71) and California (49.82) complete the bottom ten: both are striking inclusions given they both rank among the nation’s highest birth totals. California’s position is particularly noteworthy: despite recording more births than any other state, its fertility rate ranking of 42nd out of 51 jurisdictions perfectly illustrates the distinction between population size and proportionate childbearing.
In 2024, more than half of all states (27 out of 51, including the District of Columbia) recorded fertility rates above the national average. Yet the states lowering that average are doing so at an increasing rate, with the geographic divisions underlying that trend subsequently likely to further widen.
The U.S. Fertility Rate: At An All-Time Low
In 2024, the U.S. general fertility rate fell 1% to 53.8 births per 1,000 women (aged between 15 and 44). That’s the lowest level ever recorded.
The decline is notable because it occurred as a 1% increase in total births was recorded, illustrating how a growing population of women can generate more births overall as a smaller share of women give birth.
The total fertility rate fell to 1.599 births per woman. That’s down from 1.621 in 2023 and well below the replacement rate needed (2.1 births per woman) for long-term population stability.
The sharpest birth declines occurred among younger women, falling 4% among teenagers aged between 15 and 19, 3% among women aged between 20 and 24 and 2% among women aged between 25 and 29. As mentioned earlier, birth rates for women aged between 40 and 44 increased, reflecting the continued shift toward delayed parenthood and older maternal ages.
Marital Status and Childbearing
When we consider the role of marital status in the childbearing equation, there are clear divisions that affect fertility rankings in ways that are not easily explicable.
Nationally, around four in ten babies born in the United States in 2024 were born to unmarried mothers. That statistic reflects a dramatic change in how families have been formed in America over recent decades, and yet this factor varies significantly across states.
The gap between the states featuring the highest and lowest number of unmarried mother births is 32.8 percentage points. In 2024, Utah recorded just 22.1% of births to unmarried mothers, while for Louisiana, the rate was 54.9% (meaning more than half of Louisiana births occurred outside marriage compared with fewer than one in four in Utah).
Utah’s place at the top of the married-birth rankings reflects its longstanding reputation as one of the country’s most traditional, family-oriented states, a fact that’s influenced by a large Latter-day Saint population and an emphasis on marriage before children.
At 77.9% married births, Utah sits nearly 16 points above the national average. Colorado and Idaho are not far behind (76% and 73.5%), while Nebraska and South Dakota also post strong married-birth rates, reinforcing the idea that many of the states recording high birth-rates are likely to feature births occurring within two-parent households.
Yet the data resists this straightforward narrative. Louisiana and Mississippi, with respective fertility rates of 58.18 and 57.35, rank first and second for unmarried births (54.9% and 53.9%). These states combine above-average fertility rates with above-average nonmarital childbearing rates, contradicting the assumption that high fertility and high marriage rates go hand in hand.
New Mexico, Nevada, Delaware, Georgia, Arizona, the District of Columbia, Florida and Alabama complete a top ten that covers various U.S. regions.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, New Hampshire, Montana, Washington, Minnesota, and North Dakota all record unmarried birth rates well below the national average, as do Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Colorado in a group that cuts across traditional regional boundaries.
Perhaps the most revealing discovery is that several states featuring some of the nation’s lowest unmarried birth rates (including Massachusetts, New Jersey and Connecticut) also rank among the lowest for overall fertility. In these highly educated, high-cost states, in some cases women are not only delaying marriage but delaying or deciding against childbearing.
The data makes it clear: the question of who is having children in America is often closely linked to the question of how families are formed, with the answers significantly varying across the country.
The Financial Realities of Having a Child
The financial realities of childbearing are an additional aspect tied to marital status. In 2024, the national average annual cost of child care reached $13,128, up 29% since 2020 and rising faster than inflation. In 45 states and the District of Columbia, the average cost of center-based care for two children already exceeds annual mortgage payments.
For married couples earning a median income, child care consumes around 10% of their combined annual earnings. For single parents, that share rises to 35%, a direct correlation to the fact that over four in ten births now occur outside marriage.
In states with the highest unmarried birth rates (Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Mexico) the financial pressures of single parenthood are everyday economic realities. But the same is also true for new parents in top-ranking raw-number states California and Texas (which combined recorded 792,903 births in 2024, nearly one in five of all U.S. births), with both featuring housing and child-care markets that put substantial strain on single-income households.
Overall, the marital-status and child-care data point in the same direction: deciding to have a child in America is increasingly shaped by financial feasibility. And that can look very different if a household is supported by two incomes instead of one.
The Changing Face of American Births
Of the 3,628,895 births recorded in this dataset, White mothers account for 74.1%: 2,690,057 births. Yet that national figure doesn’t reveal the striking geographic variation involved, with several states showing vastly different proportions.
Hispanic mothers account for 27.1% of U.S. births (984,092), making them the second-largest demographic by a wide margin over other groups including Black mothers (14.8%), Asian mothers (6.7%), multiracial mothers (3%) and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) mothers (1%).
The proportion of new Hispanic mothers diverges significantly from the national average in the Southwest. New Mexico records a Hispanic birth share of 59.3%, the highest in the U.S., followed by Texas (50.1%) and California (48.8%). Figures in Arizona (45.9%), Nevada (40.7%), Florida (35.4%), Colorado (33.1%), New Jersey (30.7%) and Connecticut (29.1%) show that this demographic shift extends well beyond border states.
Black mothers account for 538,235 births nationally, but Southern states consistently record proportions far above the national average. Mississippi leads with 39.8%, followed by Louisiana (36.9%), Georgia (32.3%), Maryland (31.1%), Delaware (28.9%), South Carolina (26.3%) and Alabama (25.8%).
The District of Columbia’s results represent an interesting anomaly. Black mothers account for 45.4% of births, while White mothers represent 46.3% (a wafer-thin difference of just sixty-two births out of a total 7,613), making DC the closest jurisdiction in the country to racially-equal birth composition.
North Carolina records a Black birth share of 23.4% and a Hispanic share of 20.7%: in this case, multiple demographic forces are simultaneously reshaping the state’s birth population.
At the other end of the diversity spectrum, Vermont recorded the highest White birth share (92.5%), followed by West Virginia, Idaho, New Hampshire, and Wyoming. In each, White births account for more than nine out of every ten births, while Black and Hispanic shares remain comparatively small.
Asian mothers account for 241,408 births nationally, yet this number is not widely spread. California recorded 64,205 of those births, while Washington, New Jersey, and New York all feature 10% Asian birth shares. Hawaii’s 24.1% of Asian births is the highest Asian birth share of any state.
Hawaii is also the only state where White births are not the highest single proportion: their 26.1% birth share is less than that of multiracial mothers (37.8%). With 24.1% Asian mothers, and 9.7% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander mothers, Hawaii’s demographic is unique in the United States.
Oklahoma records the second-highest multiracial birth share at 9.9%, followed by Oregon and Washington.
AIAN mothers account for 35,265 births nationally, but feature their highest concentrations in Alaska (18.4%), South Dakota (13.6%), New Mexico (11.2%), Oklahoma (9.5%), Montana (8.6%) and North Dakota (7%). These figures reflect an enduringly narrow geographic concentration of Indigenous communities which contrast sharply with the negligible AIAN birth shares in the Northeast and Southeast.
The High-Pressure Career Factor
The racial and ethnic composition of American births can only be fully understood by considering the educational and professional forces that often determine when women feel they can have children. Between 1995 and 2024, the share of women aged between 25 and 34 who hold a bachelor’s degree rose from 25% to 47%, a shift that disproportionately affects various demographic groups.
College-educated women consistently have fewer children at every age. While that pattern holds across racial groups it’s particularly emphatic in the same coastal and urban states where Asian and White birth shares are highest and fertility rates are among the nation’s lowest.
The states that recorded the oldest first-time mothers (Washington, D.C. (30.8 years), Massachusetts (30) and New Jersey (29.4)) are also among those with the highest concentrations of highly educated women, for whom professional demands often severely impact the likelihood of early motherhood.
As more women enter higher education and progress their career before starting families, motherhood has increasingly shifted to later ages. Among Black women, rising educational attainment has further delayed motherhood, adding further complexity to Southern birth patterns discussed earlier (which feature younger maternal ages and lower educational attainment rates that coincide with some of the country’s highest Black birth shares).
The American birth picture is changing: not just regarding who is having children, but when they choose to have them. The gap between those timelines continues to widen.
America’s Rapidly Changing Fertility Map
America’s birth rate continues to decline despite a small increase in the total number of births. In 2024, the United States recorded 3.63 million births, up 1% from the previous year, yet the general fertility rate fell to a record-low 53.8 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44.
Since the national peak in 2007, total births have dropped 16% and fertility has declined 22%, reflecting a long-term shift in childbearing patterns.
Women in their thirties are now the primary drivers of American births, with teen birth rates down to historically low levels. The average age of first-time mothers continues to rise, particularly in urban and highly educated states.
Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, and New Jersey recorded the oldest first-time mothers, while Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma are among the youngest, highlighting a growing divide linked to education, economic opportunity and geography.
In 2024, the U.S. general fertility rate fell 1% to 53.8 births per 1,000 women (aged between 15 and 44), the lowest level ever recorded
Raw birth totals are concentrated in a handful of populous states, with California and Texas alone accounting for nearly one in five U.S. births, while the ten largest states generated more than half of all births.
Yet fertility rates tell a different story: states such as South Dakota, Nebraska, and Alaska rank highest for fertility, while the District of Columbia, Vermont, Rhode Island, and several Northeastern and West Coast states rank lowest. Rural, smaller, and more conservative states generally report higher fertility rates than large coastal states.
Family structure also varies widely: about 40% of U.S. births occur outside marriage, with rates ranging from 22.1% in Utah to 54.9% in Louisiana. Rising child-care costs (which average more than $13,000 a year) put significant financial strain on families, especially single parents.
The demographic composition of births is also evolving. Hispanic mothers account for 27.1% of U.S. births and dominate in much of the Southwest, while Black births are concentrated in the South. Educational attainment and career demands increasingly influence childbearing and contribute to delayed motherhood, lower fertility, and widening regional differences in birth patterns across the country.
“The demographic shifts we can see clear evidence of in the birth data are reshaping communities, school systems, and economies over the long term,” suggests a Birth Injury Lawyer spokesperson. “By understanding where and why those shifts are happening, we can more effectively serve the families in those communities.”
The birth of a child is a beautiful and miraculous event. However, when something goes wrong, it can cause a family incalculable pain.
When a preventable mistake injures your newborn, the future you had in mind for your child can quickly disappear. You may also become overwhelmed with bills and caretaking duties.
The birth injury attorney team at the Birth Injury Lawyers Group has dedicated its time to helping parents of injured children fight for their rights. We offer hope and potential financial compensation to families who have been harmed by a medical professional’s mistake.