The number of births to El Paso County residents declined again in 2025, the 15th time in the past 20 years that births have dropped, according to state data.
The preliminary number of births last year to El Paso County residents – 10,279 – was 5% lower than the updated preliminary numbers for 2024. The revised 2024 numbers showed a slight increase over births in 2023.
The plummeting birth rate in El Paso County has had profound effects on school enrollment. The number of children attending El Paso County schools topped 180,000 as recently as the 2012-13 school year; countywide enrollment almost certainly will drop below 160,000 this year.
Recent birth trends suggest enrollment will fall below 140,000 in 2031-32, a decline of more than 40,000 students in two decades.
Put another way, it took 13 years for the first enrollment decline of 20,000 students; the next drop of 20,000 c I’m students could take only six years. This trend will increase pressure on school districts to close campuses and cut jobs.
Over the coming two decades, the decline in births likely will dramatically alter everything from the composition of the workforce to demands on natural resources to the need for housing.
The number of births to El Paso County residents dropped by 24% between 2015 and 2025, a decline that’s more than twice the national rate. El Paso’s population is significantly younger than the nation as a whole – a median age of 33 years vs. the national median of 39 – which makes the rapid birth rate decline even more unusual.
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The Texas Department of State Health Services only provides data for births and deaths by county since 1989. El Paso County’s births peaked in 1993 at just under 16,000. The number of births last year was 36% below the 1993 peak.
What’s behind the decline in births?
The causes of El Paso’s rapidly falling birthrate haven’t yet been well studied, but it has occurred at the same time as two other major demographic trends – a decline in immigration from other countries to El Paso, and an increasing outmigration of El Pasoans to other communities in the United States.
People who choose to move – either from one country to another or from one U.S. community to another – generally are young adults or young families seeking better economic opportunities.
In El Paso’s case, data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the net number of people moving between El Paso County and foreign countries has fallen sharply since the beginning of this century. At the same time, the number of people leaving El Paso County for other U.S. communities has increasingly outpaced the number of people moving in.
The number of people El Paso County gained via immigration between 2010 and 2019 was less than half of the prior decade. The loss through net domestic migration grew by 11% in that same time.
The trend so far this decade is complicated by multiple factors. The COVID-19 pandemic massively slowed the movement of people in 2020 and 2021. A massive increase in unauthorized border crossings in 2022 and 2023 likely temporarily increased net immigration numbers for El Paso County.
President Trump’s immigration policies likely will lead to a decrease in the number of immigrants coming to El Paso. The Census Bureau will release county population estimates later this spring that will provide numbers as of July 2025.
Death trends in El Paso
The number of El Paso County residents dying fell below 6,000 last year for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. But the number of deaths in 2025 was still 5% above 2019, the last year before the pandemic.
Like the country as a whole, El Paso County’s population is aging. About 14% of county residents are age 65 or older, up from 10% in 2020. That percentage will grow in coming years as current residents age and fewer babies are born. And as the population ages, the number of deaths will increase.
SEE ALSO: As births plunge, El Paso could need far fewer schools in coming years
In recent decades, the main driver of population growth in El Paso has been natural growth – the difference between births and deaths. But as the number of births has decreased while deaths have risen, that natural population growth has plummeted.
In 1992 and 1993, as births were peaking, natural growth increased El Paso’s population by more than 12,000 people. In 2025, natural growth added only about a third of that.
The Texas Demographic Center last year projected that sometime between 2040 and 2050, the number of deaths in El Paso County will exceed the number of births.
About two-thirds of U.S. counties are already at that point – known by demographers as natural decrease – but most of those are in rural areas. The handful of urban areas experiencing natural decrease since the turn of the century include Rust Belt cities like Pittsburgh and Cleveland.
The post Births in El Paso County drop 5% in 2025 as long-term population shifts deepen appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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