birth rates

The U.S. birth rate has been trending downwards over the past 15 years — so the news that the number of births actually rose in 2021 is making headlines.

For the sixth year in a row, the number of U.S. births fell in 2020, reaching the lowest level since 1979. The fertility rate remains "below replacement" — the level needed to compensate for deaths.

Years ago, doctors sometimes lied about whose sperm they used for artificial inseminations. Could it happen now? Some argue regulation is weak in the multibillion dollar fertility treatment industry.

"The birthrate is a barometer of despair," demographer Dowell Myers says. Not since 1986 has the U.S. seen so few babies born.

The results put the U.S. further away from a viable replacement rate — the standard for a generation being able to replicate its numbers.

The March of Dimes has issued its 2015 report card on early births across the country and Florida gets bad grades for its premature birth rates.The state…