UNH Today

Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer with the Carsey School, says birth rates had been drifting down for years and then went off a cliff during the Great Recession more than a decade ago. “In fact, because birth rates are so low and there’s been so little natural increase in the United States, the growth rate last year was the lowest it’s been since the time of the Spanish flu 100 years ago,” said Johnson. Combined with the fact that fewer immigrants are coming to the U.S., Johnson says serious implications from the birth rate decline hang over American society.