US's future ghost towns where more people are dying than being born

More than 80 percent of cities in Vermont and West Virginia are now well on their way to vanishing, researchers at the University of Illinois in Chicago found this year .

New Hampshire , Michigan , Mississippi and Illinois are not far behind: All four states are likely to suffer steep population drops in at least three quarters of their cities.

In the US as a whole, the total fertility rate — or the number of children born to the average woman over her lifetime — fell to 1.62 births per woman in 2023 , the lowest since the government began tracking this data in the 1930s .

In a bizarre twist, the latest research suggests that many of the 'lucky' areas experiencing population growth — like Phoenix , Arizona and the Florida coast — are at ground zero for the myriad extreme weather crises looming on the horizon.

Infrastructure failures will not only plague these 'ghost cities,' however, as Virginia Iglesias , interim director of the University of Colorado , Boulder 's Earth Lab noted.

Florida 's population has actually tripled since the 1970s statewide, ballooning to over 22 million .

One 2023 study, conducted by Ohio State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , found young Americans still aspire to have two children on average.

The study pooled generations-worth of responses obtained by the US Department of Health and Human Services for their National Survey of Family Growth.

Tufts University urban planning scholar Justin Hollander noted that the pressure is on federal and local leaders to anticipate and adjust to these emerging crises.