Total fertility rate in Wisconsin 

By the numbers

Birth rates are falling in many places, and this has been getting attention lately.  

Wisconsin Public Radio covered it as an argument for more childcare subsidies. The New York Times published two researchers who said depopulation is a good thing.

More seriously, the Wall Street Journal this week surveyed declining fertility around the world and experts’ alarm at the implications, with the fertility rate of the world as a whole perhaps below the level needed to keep population constant. Even India and China now have fertility rates below replacement, the newspaper notes.  

And in Wisconsin? Our state’s total fertility rate peaked in 1960 and sharply declined shortly after, falling below 2 in the early 1970s and only approaching it in recent years before turning downward again.

The figure graphed here is “total fertility rate,” an estimate in each year of the average number of children a woman would bear in her lifetime if current fertility patterns held true. In 2022, the Wisconsin rate was 1.6 children in a lifetime, while in 1960, it was 4.1 children. 

Badger Institute was provided data from David Egan-Robertson, a demographer at UW-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory. Robertson said that about two-thirds of the decline in Wisconsin’s total fertility rate since 2007 is due to the decline in teenage fertility rates.

The underlying numbers