Is America heading toward a baby crisis?

The United States could be heading toward a national emergency as birth rates, which have been on the downturn for years, just hit a record low, The Washington Post reports. While it's too soon to tell what the consequences could be — or if this trend is just a blip — low birthrates have the ability to send tremors through the economy as young people are unable to replace retirees and tax revenue falls.

So what's going on?

Like most things in life, you can blame this on millennials; many experts fear the generation is less likely to have babies, while others caution that millennials are simply putting off parenthood longer. But Donna M. Strobino, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The Washington Post that there is another decline, too, that we should be celebrating: teen pregnancies.

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"What this is is a trend of women becoming more educated and more mature," Strobino said. "I'm not sure that's bad."