Texans are having more babies than the rest of the United States as the nation\u2019s fertility rate declines, Census data released Thursday show. But the state\u2019s fertility rate is falling, too.<\/p>\n
Texas had the highest fertility rate among other large states like California, Florida and New York in 2025, according to The Texas Tribune\u2019s calculation of Census data. The state saw about 58 live births for every 1,000 women of childbearing age from July 1, 2024 to July 1, 2025, the data show \u2014\u00a0higher than the national average of about 53.<\/p>\n
Still, the state\u2019s fertility rate has fallen for nearly two decades, mirroring a global trend of declining births. Americans aren\u2019t having enough children to maintain the country\u2019s population in the long run, a decline driven by a number of factors including the high cost of living and a meager safety net for would-be parents, experts said. Expanded access to contraception and sex education has driven down birth rates, and helped women stay in the workforce and have kids later in life. Americans are getting married later and having fewer children, if they choose to have them at all \u2014\u00a0and making sure they\u2019re financially secure if they do.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you actually want to encourage people to have children, you have to create an environment that makes them interested in doing that and feeling like they\u2019re responsible parents,\u201d said Elizabeth Gregory, who leads the University of Houston\u2019s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality.<\/p>\n
That slower birth rate has spurred concerns that the country\u2019s population could eventually decline, leading to slower economic growth as the number of workers declines and leaving a smaller number of people to shoulder the costs of taking care of an aging population.<\/p>\n
Texas has historically had higher birth rates than states like California and New York, said Lloyd Potter, the state demographer. Texas is younger, with more people of child-bearing age, than other states, he said. Hispanics have higher fertility rates than other ethnic groups, Potter said, and Texas has a high Hispanic population. It\u2019s also possible that the state\u2019s higher proportion of conservative Christians, who tend to have larger families, than other places has kept its birth rates high, Potter said.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s urban areas also have higher birth rates than other large metros. Out of the country\u2019s 25 largest counties, Dallas, Harris and Tarrant counties had the three highest birth rates as of July 1, 2025, Census data show. Out of the state\u2019s 25 most populous counties, 10 exceed the state\u2019s fertility rate: Hidalgo, Webb, Bell, Cameron, Jefferson, Dallas, Nueces, McLennan, Smith and Harris.<\/p>\n
Other states have higher fertility rates than Texas, including South Dakota, Nebraska, Kentucky, Alaska and Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
None of them, including Texas, is exempt from declining birth rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cBirth rates are declining in all states,\u201d Potter said. \u201cThe pace of decline has been somewhat similar in Texas as it has been in states that were starting from a similar place.\u201d<\/p>\n
High costs of housing and child care have weighed on people\u2019s decision of whether to have kids at all or have as many kids as they\u2019d like, Gregory said. Anxiety around climate change has also been a factor, she said; people might not want to bring children into a world they believe is going to be worse.<\/p>\n
On the bright side, the nation\u2019s falling birth rate has been fueled by a significant drop in teenage births. That\u2019s true in Texas, which remains above the national average in teen births; the state doesn\u2019t require sex education, makes it difficult for teenagers to access effective contraception and has the strictest abortion ban in the country.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible economic concerns about declining birth rates are overblown, Gregory said. For those future workers who aren\u2019t being born, they are being replaced. \u201cWomen are taking the place of their unborn children in the workforce, you could say,\u201d Gregory said.<\/p>\n
On the flip side, Texas\u2019 higher fertility rate may help the state\u2019s economy weather workforce shortages brought on by a nationwide slowdown in immigration, Potter said.<\/p>\n
Just because people aren\u2019t having kids now doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019ll never have kids, Gregory said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you\u2019re seeing is a big shock to birth rates,\u201d Gregory said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean that all these people won\u2019t have kids later. It just means they haven\u2019t had them now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Disclosure: University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune\u2019s journalism. Find a complete\u00a0list of them here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texans are having more babies than the rest of the United States as the nation\u2019s fertility rate declines,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[102,80014,1724,47270,110068,27,29,28,36798,513],"class_list":["post-351195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-dallas","tag-hidalgo","tag-immigration","tag-jefferson","tag-sex-education","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-the-texas-tribune","tag-university-of-houston"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}