No coronavirus baby boom: Births expected to plunge in US after pandemic, experts say
Early in the pandemic, many people joked that there would be a baby boom at the end of the year after months of quarantining, but a new report estimates there could be a substantial drop in births instead — a decline anywhere between 300,000 to 500,000 births next year in the U.S.
Condom sales were even reported to have been increasing in the U.S. since coronavirus cases first emerged, McClatchy News previously reported.
The two economists behind the calculations based their expectations on evidence from the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the 1918 Spanish Flu, according to their report in the Brookings Institution.
The “tremendous economic loss, uncertainty and insecurity” stemming from the COVID-19 crisis could not only make it difficult to financially support a child, but also influence desires and physical capabilities to have children.
“The circumstances in which we now find ourselves are likely to be long-lasting and will lead to a permanent loss of income for many people,” Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine wrote in their report. “We expect that many of these births will not just be delayed – but will never happen.”
“There will be a COVID-19 baby bust. That will be yet another cost of this terrible episode,” the economists wrote.
No money, more problems, fewer babies
In just 12 weeks since the pandemic began, more than 44 million Americans have filed unemployment claims, media outlets report.
Experts predict that 42% of those recent layoffs will be permanent, based on past studies of recession-related job loss, according to research from the University of Chicago.
At the start of the Great Recession in 2007, the birth rate was 69.1 births per 1,000 women between ages 15 and 44, the report said. In 2012, the rate dropped to 63 births per 1,000 women.
“That nine percent drop meant roughly 400,000 fewer births,” the economists said.
That’s because the more income someone makes, the more likely they are to have more children — and vice versa, the report said. “It’s what economists call ‘a positive income effect.’”
“A deeper and longer lasting recession will then mean lower lifetime income for some people, which means that some women will not just delay births, but they will decide to have fewer children,” the economists said.
And the loss of about half a million births, as the economist estimated, could lead to an economic loss of about $5 trillion over decades, the Washington Post reported.
“On top of the economic impact, there will likely be a further decline in births as a direct result of the public health crisis and the uncertainty and anxiety it creates, and perhaps to some extent, social distancing,” the economists said.
Disease and natural disasters
Historically, births spike about nine months following natural disasters and major events such as blizzards, electricity blackouts and hurricanes, the report said.
“High-mortality” events such as famines, earthquakes, heatwaves and disease — including Hurricanes Maria and Katrina, and the 2015 Ebola outbreaks in West Africa — have also been found to have “very predictable effects on reducing births,” Lyman Stone, an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote for the Institute for Family Studies.
Similar to the 1918 Spanish Flu, there is a plethora of uncertainty and anxiety surrounding the novel coronavirus, “which could affect people’s desire to give birth, and also biologically affect pregnancy and birth outcomes,” the report said.
“(The) libido is down and menstrual cycles may be off,” Dr. Renee Wellenstein, an OB/GYN in New York, told CNN. “It may not be possible to conceive due to this.”
Each spike in deaths during the Spanish Flu led to a 12.5% decline in births, the report said, suggesting the precise correlation implies causation.
Overall, the economists found a 15% decline in annual births following that pandemic, but the major difference compared to COVID-19 is that the Spanish flu was not accompanied with a recession; World War I supported jobs in manufacturing.
“This suggests COVID-19 could have a bigger impact, since the public health crisis has hit the economy, too,” the report said, especially since women today have access to “more effective forms of contraception,” unlike women early in the 20th century.
This story was originally published June 17, 2020 at 3:59 PM with the headline "No coronavirus baby boom: Births expected to plunge in US after pandemic, experts say."
