This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
New Hampshire saw a jump in the number of newborns last year according to preliminary figures, with the most in-state births reported in 14 years except for a short post-COVID spike.
However, that mini baby boom doesn’t mean trends in New Hampshire’s population have changed because the state also saw a near-record number of deaths. What is known as “natural decrease” — more deaths than births — continued for the ninth year in a row.
Preliminary data from New Hampshire Vital Records indicates that 12,593 babies were registered in the state in 2025, the most since 2011 except for a pandemic-era spike in 2021, when 12,670 births were registered. The 2025 figure, which may be adjusted as more data comes in, is more than 400 higher than 2024 and about 800 more than the low point of 2019.
Ken Johnson, a demographics expert at the Carsey Institute at UNH, said it was too soon to know what was behind the jump. One possibility is that New Hampshire saw more women in their 30s or 40s deciding it was time to have children. “New Hampshire women tend to have children later than U.S. women as a whole,” he said.
He noted that next week on Tuesday, the Census Bureau will release new state and national level numbers that will also factor in migration patterns.
Like many places around the world, New Hampshire has seen a long, slow decline in the number of births taking place. Thirty years ago, more than 14,000 babies were delivered in the Granite State each year but that figure has been below 13,000 for more than a decade and at times has dipped below 12,000.
As births have been declining, the number of deaths has been increasing as the state ages, from 9,106 deaths three decades ago to last year’s preliminary figure of 14,111. The 2025 figure is the second highest on record, behind only that of 2022.
The result is that natural population — the change in total population not including people who move into or out of the state — has shrunk every year since 2016. In 2025, for example, there were 1,518 more deaths than births.
Since 2016, the state has seen more than 10,000 excess deaths over births. If it wasn’t for in-migration of people, mostly from other states but also from other countries, New Hampshire would be shrinking.
