Natural increase (more births than deaths) had been on the decline since 2020 and more states had natural decrease (more deaths than births) in the first years of the decade than at any point in the 2010s, driven largely by mortality hikes combined with smaller decreases in births.
Areas with large older populations often experience natural decrease and shrinking populations in the absence of migration. Prior to 2020, natural?increase?for the United States hovered around one million a year. It began declining in 2020 but this national trend obscured widespread natural?decrease?at the state level since the beginning of the decade.
