While it may seem like the birth rate is making a turnaround, she explained, it’s really people playing catch-up after delaying having kids because of the pandemic coupled with people who would have had kids right now anyway.It’s a continuation of a decades-long trend in declining births for multiple cohorts of women as they wait to have children until a later age or choose to have fewer kids or none at all.It puts the US in line with the worldwide birth trends of other high-income countries and some middle-income countries, Christine Percheski, an associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University, previously told Insider.Women postponing having kids is a sign of economic progress, she said: “It’s about women having access to education and employment opportunities.Brookings’ analysis, which forecast the total number of children ever born based on simulated age profiles of women in the 1985 to 2000 birth cohort, suggested that US fertility rates would be below replacement levels for the foreseeable future."