NEW YORK (AP) – U.S. births bumped up last year, but the number of babies born was still lower than before the coronavirus pandemic.
The 1% increase was a bit of a rebound from 2020, the first year of the pandemic, which witnessed the largest one-year drop in the U.S. births in nearly 50 years.
But there were still about 86,000 fewer births last year than in 2019, according to a government report released Tuesday.
“We’re still not returning to pre-pandemic levels,” said Dr. Denise Jamieson, chair of gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine.
U.S. births had been declining for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, and “I would expect that we would continue to see small, modest decreases,” she said.