America Counts: Stories Behind the Numbers

U.S. Fertility Continues to Drop but Still High in Some Counties

Written by: George M. Hayward, Luke T. Rogers and Shannon Sabo

The nation’s fertility rate has dropped nearly every year since 2007, but this national decline masks substantial geographic variation.

Fertility rates differ widely across U.S. counties, and even within individual states there are often both high and low fertility counties.

By combining population estimates data released this week on the age characteristics of U.S. counties with birth data released in March, we calculated the general fertility rate for every county in the nation.