North Carolina's falling fertility rate could shape the state's future
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While North Carolina's population has surged, the state's fertility rates have moved in the opposite direction.
Why it matters: A falling fertility rate will have a strong influence on the shape of North Carolina's demographics and economy in the coming decades.
- The state's total fertility rate is now below replacement level — meaning that without new people moving here, the state's population would decline over the long term, Nathan T. Dollar, director of Carolina Demography at UNC-Chapel Hill, told Axios.
By the numbers: Since 2007, the number of births per 1,000 residents has fallen from 14.4 births to 11.4 births.
- That is a 20.9% decline overall — and it mirrors both a national trend as well as a global one.
State of play: Dollar said that falling birth rates are making North Carolina an older state, with the median age of 38.9 years the highest it's ever been.
- Without an influx of new residents to the state from other places, Dollar said, North Carolina's labor force is likely to shrink in the coming decades.
- That could mean that there will be fewer health care workers, for example, to care for an aging population.
Yes, but: The birth rate in North Carolina has rebounded from a pandemic low — a factor that Dollar attributes to a strong in-migration of women in their prime childbearing years.
- However, it's unlikely that the increase in births will continue, he said.
What they're saying: "It remains to be seen, but I don't think that we're in the middle of a baby boom or anything like that, and fertility rates are gonna skyrocket and continue to increase," Dollar said. "I don't foresee that happening."