For the first time in history, the European Union recorded fewer births than the United States
The data are from 2024, and despite the fact that the supranational body has about 120 million inhabitants more than the USA.
European Union building in Brussels/ Nicolas Tucat.
For the first time in history, the European Union (EU) recorded fewer births than the United States. The data are from 2024, and even though the supranational body has some 120 million more.
According to Eurostat, the EU recorded 3.56 million births in 2024, less than the 3.62 million reported by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), an agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the United States, the increase in 2023 was 1%.
In the EU, the negative natural balance of 1.3 million was reversed by the migration flow of 2.3 million, leading to a slight population increase.
"The number of deaths is expected to further increase because of the ageing population, and assuming that fertility rates remain at a relatively low level, the negative natural change (more deaths than births) could thus well continue. Should this be the case, the EU’s overall population decline or growth in the future is likely to depend largely on the contribution made by net migration," Eurostat explained.
In the United States, although births increased slightly in 2024, the total fertility rate ended the year at below-replacement levels.
In addition, the state that contributed the most births was California, with 401,515. It was followed by Texas (390,506), Florida (224,267), New York (204,864), and Pennsylvania (127,079). Among the lowest contributors were Vermont (5,026), Wyoming (6,085), Alaska (8,928), and North Dakota (9,627).
EDITOR'S NOTE: As an attentive reader has pointed out, an earlier version of this text inadvertently omitted the term of comparison and incorrectly stated that the EU has a population of 120 million. Its actual population is 449 million (2024), 120 million more than the US.
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