The useful fertility story is not one falling line, because NCHS Data Brief number 556 says the fertility rate for women ages 30-34 fell 8 percent from 2015 to 2024, while the rate for women 35-39 rose 5 percent and the rate for women 40 and older rose 24 percent. [1]

That refines the paper's earlier demographic-winter frame, which argued that institutions need tracker math rather than vibes about the country that stopped growing, because the newer NCHS brief adds age and geography.

The state variation is the story's spine: NCHS says the fertility rate for women 30-34 declined in 37 states and D.C., rates for women 35-39 rose in 35 states, rates for women 40 and older rose in 46 states, D.C. had the lowest 30-34 rate in 2024 at 60.1, and South Dakota had the highest at 122.5. [1]

The current-year backdrop still points down, since NCHS's provisional 2025 report says overall U.S. births and the general fertility rate fell again, but older motherhood is rising inside that decline. [2]

That distinction matters for medicine as well as politics, because prenatal care, infertility care, employer benefits, hospital obstetrics, and state family policy look different when the change is not merely fewer births but births shifting later, and a single national fertility number cannot carry that workload.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago