U.S. Birth Rate Rises for First Time in 7 Years – Musk Warns Still Below Minimum Sustainable Levels

The CDC announced the birthrate in the United States reversed its downward trend and increased for the first time in seven years, but Tesla founder Elon Musk points out it’s still not enough to meet the minimum replacement threshold.

“The provisional number of births for the United States in 2021 was 3,659,289, up 1% from 2020 and the first increase in the number of births since 2014,” the CDC said in a report released Tuesday.

Previous stats had shown births were decreasing on average by 2% per year, ABC News reports.

While an increase in births is cause for celebration, Musk warned on Twitter Tuesday the rate is still below minimum sustainable “replacement” level thresholds – and has been for 50 years.

The depopulation issue is a hot topic for the billionaire entrepreneur with seven children, who has repeatedly expressed concerns that negative birthrates represent “the biggest threat to the future of human civilization.”

“Most people in the world are operating under the false impression that we’ve got too many people,” Musk said in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt. “This is not true. Earth could maintain a population many times the current level. The birth rate has been dropping like crazy.”

He added that “ridiculous population estimates from the [United Nations]” should be “updated, because really, they don’t make any sense,” a sentiment he echoed on Twitter earlier this year.

Commenting on Japan’s falling birthrate earlier this month, Musk warned the decrease could wipe Japan off the map, which “would be a great loss for the world.”

Remarkably, the recent rise in birthrates could be attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Experts aren’t sure, but they speculate that women who postponed having babies in the earlier, more uncertain days of the pandemic eventually decided to take the leap during 2021—especially older women who may have realized there was no point in waiting until the stretched-out pandemic ended,” Newser reports.

The birthrate data also comes as top reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Shanna H. Swan has warned the precipitous drop in sperm counts over the past few decades means men could be completely sterile by 2045 due to poor lifestyle habits, as well as a bombardment of endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Reporting from Newswars.

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