According to records from Harris Health (formerly the Harris County Hospital District), the system has delivered nearly 20% fewer births through the first ten months of its current fiscal year (October 2025-July 2026).

While Harris Health handles only a little less than 10% of births in the County, this likely signals a further leg down in births in Harris County overall. As I have previously discussed, births in Harris County have been trending down for the last decade. However, births have leveled off somewhat in 2022-2025. That would correspond with very heavy international immigration into the County during those years. It seems likely that the new stricter immigration enforcement is one of the drivers in this more recent downturn.

About two-thirds of counties in the US already have a net negative natural population growth (i.e., more fatalities than births). Harris and its surrounding counties have been spared that, primarily because our region's population is significantly younger than the national average. In 2025, Harris County had about 35,000 more births than fatalities, with the MSA having about 48,000 more.

Future fatality rates are fairly predictable. Absent some remarkable medical breakthrough(s), fatalities will rise by about 2%-3% per year in our region. However, birth rates are tied very closely to immigration because immigrants tend to be younger and, therefore, more likely to have children.  As a result, our region's future birth rate is directly tied to immigration and is inherently uncertain because future immigration policy is uncertain.

We will not have the 2026 US Census birth numbers for Harris County until next spring. In the meantime, births at Harris Health should give us a sense of what those may look like.