Update: This article has been updated with additional states reporting data on recent births.
When the pandemic first started in the United States, many joked that widespread blockages would trigger a baby boom and very high birth rates. But almost a year later, the opposite seems to be true.
Provisional birth rate data provided to CBS News by 29 state health departments shows a decline of about 7.3% in births in December 2020, nine months after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization California, the most populous state, reported a 10.2% decline, dropping to 32,910 births in December from 36,651 the previous year. In the same period, births decreased by 30.4% in Hawaii.
Although birth rates have dropped for nearly a decade, Phil Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, said the December drop was the biggest he has seen since the end of the baby boom in 1964.
“The scale of this is really big,” Cohen said in a telephone interview with CBS News. “Regardless of whether you think it is good or bad to have many children, the fact that we are suddenly having less means that things are not going well for many people.”
As more states report birth data, the rate of decline may change. Texas, which accounts for almost 9% of the United States population, will not have data for December until the end of March. Birth rate data for New York, the fourth most populous state, was only available until 2018.
“We don’t know if this is the beginning of a major decline over the next year or if it is just a March shock,” said Cohen. “But I’m more inclined, based on history, to think that the whole of next year will be too low for births.”
In June, the Brookings Institution speculated that the pandemic would lead to 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births in 2021, citing “huge economic losses, uncertainties and insecurity”. The think tank subsequently revised the forecast to 300,000 due to “a job market that has improved slightly more quickly than anticipated”, but noted that new problems such as the general closure of schools and daycare centers could also lead to fewer births.
Among the 32 states that had annual data available, there were about 95,000 fewer births in 2020 compared to the previous year, a drop of about 4.4%, according to data compiled by CBS News. Each state reported a drop, with the exception of New Hampshire, which reported four additional births in 2020 compared to 2019.
The initial data are according to a survey conducted at the start of the pandemic by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group. The survey, published in May, found that about a third of women said they were delaying pregnancy or wanted fewer children because of the pandemic.
“What we are seeing now are these attitudes acting on their real behaviors,” said Laura Lindberg, the lead researcher at Guttmacher who was the author of the study.
Turbulent economic conditions and weak labor markets have historically led to declines in birth rates. But Lindberg says the drop from the pandemic is much greater than what would normally be expected; in the wake of the Great Recession, birth rates fell by only about 3%.
“The impact of COVID on our lives is unprecedented and is far from over now,” Lindberg said in a telephone interview with CBS News. “Until people feel more confident about the economy and the state of the world, concerns about having children will continue.”