California’s birth rate has hit a record low, a historic “baby bust” in a state with the world’s fourth largest economy, dipping below the birth rate of 1906, when San Francisco was recovering from the great earthquake that destroyed most of the city, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
With just 10.2 births per 1,000 population through 2023, the rate has dropped more than half since the World War II baby boom in the late 1940s and ’50s of 24.8, and nearly half since 1991, when the birth rate was 20.
“What is causing the decline in birth rates is honestly not entirely clear,” said Eric McGhee, senior fellow at the PPIC and co-author of a forthcoming paper on the topic. However, “the reality is that birth rates are declining from all over the country.”…