US will see more deaths than births over next 10 years: report

Deaths in the United States are expected to outpace births for the first time within the next decade. This comes as birth rates have hit record lows in the country in recent years.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, projections show that “beginning in 2033, annual deaths exceed annual births.” The office projected that the population of the country will increase from 350 million in 2025 to 372 million in 2055, with immigration becoming an “increasingly important source of population growth”

“Without immigration, the population would shrink beginning in 2033, in part because fertility rates are projected to remain too low for a generation to replace itself,” the CBO wrote in its report. Fertility rates have continued to be lower than the replacement rate, which is 2.1 births per woman.

In 2020, fertility rates were at 1.64 births per woman in the US, however, that number dropped to 1.62 in 2023. The CBO projects that the fertility rate will hover at 1.60 by 2035 and remain about the same until 2055.

The CBO noted, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, that the projections for population growth do not take into account the change of immigration policies that are yet to occur under President-elect Donald Trump, but Goldman Sachs has projected the net increase in immigrants at around 750,000 a year for Trump’s term.

By the end of the 30-year-long forecast of population growth, the CBO expects it to slow up to an increase of 0.02 annually in the US. In 2024 the population growth was 1.09 percent, largely due to immigration.