New Hampshire had 11,761 births in 2024, the lowest number in modern times, as a bump in births after COVID has ended and the state has returned to the long trend of fewer babies being born here every year.

The 2024 number of births is 330 smaller than the figure in 2023, 540 smaller than a decade ago and 2,400 births or 16% smaller than it was three decades ago, when the state had almost 200,000 fewer people.

New Hampshire is far from alone in this pattern. Many states and developed countries have seen the birth rate – the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime – decline over the past two decades as social patterns have changed.  

The United Nations estimates that the total number of births happening in the world each year peaked in 2013 and is expected to slowly decline for the foreseeable future. Even so, the world’s population will continue to grow for at least the next generation because the number of women entering child-bearing age is increasing and the number of births is still outpacing the number of deaths. But that's not the case everywhere: A few countries in East Asia and Europe are starting to see their population decline.

A slowing of population growth is good news for environmental reasons, since it limits the pressure on global ecosystems,  but bad news for economic and social reasons since it leaves fewer working adults to support the elderly.  

The Trump administration is among a number of governments talking about or instituting policies designed to boost the number of births, although such practices historically have little effect. No country in the world has been able to reverse declining birth rates to any degree.

Looking at CDC data just released, it appears that Vermont saw the fewest births in the country in 2024, barely 5,000 of them. That’s fewer even than Wyoming, the only state with a smaller population.

David Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@cmonitor.com