The Covid-19 Baby Bust is here

A year after the pandemic, early data and surveys point to baby savings in many advanced economies, from the United States to Europe and East Asia, often on top of existing downward trends in births.

A combination of economic and health crises is causing many people to delay or abandon plans to have children. Demographers warn that the fall is unlikely to be temporary, especially if the pandemic and its economic consequences are prolonged.

“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 it will have lifelong effects on the fertility rate.”

A survey conducted 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 to have a child in 2020 decided to postpone or abandon plans to conceive over the next year.

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

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

For many countries, detailed birth data at the end of 2020 are still months away. When numbers are available, they are not encouraging.

Japan, France and Belgium are among the countries that reported unusually sharp falls in births nine months after the start of the pandemic, compared to the previous year. In France, the number of births in January fell by 13.5% compared to a year earlier, a much stronger drop than the monthly drop of 1.7% recorded on average during the first ten months of 2020.

In Hungary, one of the few European countries where fertility increased before the pandemic, the number of births fell sharply year-on-year in December.

It seems that the country most affected so far is Italy. The country has one of the oldest populations in the world and has struggled for years with declining birth rates, in part as a result of a sclerotic economy that left young people behind. Then came the Covid-19, which struck Italy soon and hard.

Births in Italy fell 21.6% in December from the previous year, according to initial estimates by the Italian statistical agency based on data from 15 major cities. This represents a much larger drop than during the first ten months of 2020, when births fell by an average of 3.3%. In general, in 2020, almost twice as many people died in Italy as those born there.

The continuing health emergency in Italy and Europe and the struggle to recover economically mean that the baby crisis is unlikely to end soon. An added factor is the long-term impact of people who cannot start new relationships during the pandemic.

“The phenomenon of declining births has reached an unprecedented level,” said Maria Vicario, who heads the national association of midwives in Italy. “The problems we had before are still here. In addition, weddings are postponed and there are more unemployed young couples. People who lose their jobs can’t think of a pregnancy. “

Historically, traumatic events such as pandemics, wars, and economic crises have often resulted in fewer births. Some baby busts are short and followed by bounces. But the harder the crisis, the more likely it is that possible births will not only be postponed, but never happen, demographers say.

For example, there was no rebound after the global financial crisis. The U.S. birth rate, after rising to its highest level in decades in 2007, fell after the 2008 crisis and has since gradually declined.

The decline in births is bad news for advanced economies. Young people nurture innovation, drive growth, and are needed to fund the pensions and health systems of aging societies. The lack of workers makes it difficult to maintain the increase in productivity.

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

Chinese couples may now have two children, but many who were undecided about having a first or second child postponed their plans to 2020. Surveys have found concerns ranging from uncertain incomes to fears of contracting the virus during reviews. of maternity.

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

China has not yet released data on the 2020 population across the country, but several local governments have reported double-digit percentage declines in the number of births as of 2019.

Some countries are trying to increase financial support for marriage and pregnancy. In Japan, which has the oldest population of any major nation, there has been more aid for fertility treatment since January.

The number of births in Japan fell 9.3% in December from a year earlier, compared to an average of 2.3% during the first ten months of 2020.

Haruka Matsui stopped going for fertility treatment in December when a new wave of Covid-19 cases affected Japan. “It made it much harder for me to visit the clinic,” the 34-year-old working mother of a 3-year-old said. Ms. Matsui, who became naturally pregnant with her first baby, struggled to conceive a second before starting treatment in August. “I’ll put up with it 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 to [email protected]