Baby Bust Covid-19 is here

A year after the start of the pandemic, the first data and research point to a baby bust in many advanced economies, from the United States to Europe and East Asia, often in addition to the declining trends in births.

A combination of economic and health crises is leading many people to postpone or abandon plans to have children. Demographers warn that the drop is unlikely to be temporary, especially if the pandemic and its economic consequences drag on.

“All the evidence points to a sharp decline in fertility rates and the number of births in highly developed countries,” said Tomas Sobotka, a researcher at the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna. “The longer this period of uncertainty lasts, the more lifelong effects it will have on the fertility rate.”

A survey by the Italian research group Osservatorio Giovani between late March and early April in the five largest countries in Western Europe – Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom – found that more than two-thirds of respondents who initially planned having a child in 2020 decided to postpone or abandon plans to conceive during the next year.

In the United States, a survey by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization, found that a third of women interviewed in late April and early May wanted to delay procreation or have fewer children because of the pandemic.

The Brookings Institution estimated in December that, as a result of the pandemic, 300,000 fewer babies would be born in the United States in 2021 compared to last year. This estimate is based on research evidence and historical experience that an increase of one percentage point in the unemployment rate reduces the birth rate by about 1%.

For many countries, detailed data on births in late 2020 are still months away. Where figures are available, they are not encouraging.

Japan, France and Belgium are among the nations that reported unusually steep declines in the number of births nine months after the start of the pandemic, compared to the previous year. In France, the number of births in January fell 13.5% compared to the previous year, a much steeper drop than the 1.7% monthly decline recorded on average during the first 10 months of 2020.

In Hungary, one of the few European countries where fertility was increasing before the pandemic, the number of births fell dramatically in December compared to the previous year.

The country most affected so far appears to be Italy. The country has one of the world’s oldest populations and has struggled for years with declining birth rates, partly as a result of a sclerotic economy that has left young people behind. Next came Covid-19, which hit Italy early and hard.

Births in Italy fell 21.6% in December compared to the previous year, according to the first estimates by the Italian statistical agency based on data from 15 major cities. This is a much bigger drop than during the first 10 months of 2020, when births fell by an average of 3.3%. Overall, in 2020, almost twice as many people died in Italy than were born there.

The continued health emergency in Italy and Europe and the struggle to recover economically means that the baby crisis is unlikely to end soon. An additional factor is the long-term impact of people being unable to start new relationships during the pandemic.

“The phenomenon of declining births has reached an unprecedented level,” said Maria Vicario, who heads Italy’s national midwives association. “The problems that we had before are still here. In addition, marriages are being postponed and more young couples are unemployed. People who lose their jobs cannot think about getting pregnant. “

Historically, traumatic events like pandemics, wars and economic crises have often resulted in fewer births. Some baby busts are short lived and are followed by rebounds. But the longer a crisis lasts, the greater the chances that potential births will not just be postponed, but will never happen, demographers say.

There was no recovery after the global financial crisis, for example. The US birth rate – after reaching its highest level in decades in 2007 – has plummeted after the 2008 crisis and has gradually declined since then.

The decline in births is bad news for advanced economies. Young people foster innovation, driving growth, and are needed to finance pensions and health systems in aging societies. The scarcity of workers makes it difficult to sustain increased productivity.

This is a concern in China. The most populous country in the world was already on a path of declining births due to the persistent effects of its one-child policy, which was abolished in late 2015 after three decades.

Chinese couples can now have two children, but many who were undecided about having a first or second child postponed their plans in 2020. Research has found concerns ranging from uncertain income to fear of contracting the virus during maternity exams.

Liu Xiaoqing, a 32-year-old girl from Beijing, said the pandemic turned her against the idea of ​​having a second child, which she and her husband were considering. The mother of a 2-year-old said, “I can’t even protect a child from a major disaster like this with absolute certainty, let alone two children.”

China has yet to release national population data for 2020, but several local governments have reported double-digit percentage declines in the number of births from 2019.

Some countries are trying to increase financial support for marriage and pregnancy. In Japan, which has the oldest population in any major nation, this has included more help with fertility treatment since January.

The number of births in Japan fell 9.3% in December compared to the previous year, compared with an average of 2.3% during the first 10 months of 2020.

Haruka Matsui stopped undergoing fertility treatment in December, when a new wave of cases from Covid-19 hit Japan. “It became much more difficult for me to go to the clinic,” said the working mother of a 3-year-old boy, 34 years old. Ms. Matsui, who became pregnant naturally with her first child, struggled to conceive a second before starting treatment in August. “I’m going to hold on for a while, because I’m not that old.”

—Miho Inada in Tokyo and Liyan Qi in New York contributed to this article.

Write to Margherita Stancati at [email protected]