The Covid-19 baby bust is here

A year in the pandemic indicates early data and surveys of a baby bust in many advanced economies, from the US to Europe to East Asia, often above and beyond the current downward trend in births.

A combination of health and economic crises has led many people to postpone or abandon plans to have children. Demographers warn that the decline is unlikely to be temporary, especially if the pandemic and its economic consequences continue.

“All evidence points to a sharp decline in fertility rates and in 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 affect the fertility rate for life.”

A survey conducted by 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 the respondents who initially planned to have a child in 2020 decided to postpone plans to conceive or abandon it the following year.

In the US, a study by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization, found that one-third of women surveyed in late April and early May wanted to delay childbirth or have fewer children due to the pandemic.

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

For many countries, there are still months away from detailed birth data at the end of 2020. Where numbers are available, it is not encouraging.

Japan, France and Belgium are among the countries that reported unusual sudden declines in births nine months after the pandemic began, compared to a year earlier. In France, the number of births decreased by 13.5% in January compared to a year earlier, a much steeper decline than the 1.7% monthly decline recorded on average during the first ten months of 2020.

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

The country that has been hit the hardest so far appears to be Italy. The country has one of the world’s oldest populations and has been struggling for years with declining birth rates, in part due to a sclerotic economy that has left young people behind. Then came Covid-19, who hit Italy early and hard.

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

The ongoing emergency in Italy and Europe and the struggle to return economically mean that the baby crisis is unlikely to end any time soon. An additional factor is the long-term impact that people cannot start new relationships during the pandemic.

“The phenomenon of declining births has reached an unprecedented level,” said Maria Vicario, who heads the National Midwifery Association. “The problems we ‘ve had before are still here. In fact, it is being postponed and more young couples are out of work. People who lose their jobs can not think of a pregnancy. ”

Historically, traumatic events such as pandemics, wars and economic crises have often led to fewer births. Some baby breasts are short-lived and are followed by setbacks. But the longer a crisis lasts, the greater the chance that potential births will not only be postponed, but never happen, demographers say.

No setback followed the global financial crisis. The US birth rate – after rising to its highest level in decades in 2007 – fell after the 2008 crisis and has been steadily declining since then.

Decline in births is bad news for advanced economies. Young people stimulate innovation, stimulate growth and are needed to fund pensions and health care systems in older communities. A shortage of workers makes it difficult to maintain rising productivity.

This is worrying in China. The world’s most populous country was already on the verge of declining births as a result of the continuing consequences of its one-child policy, which was abolished at the end of 2015 after three decades.

Chinese couples can now have two children, but many who have not decided to have a first or second child have postponed their plans in 2020. The investigations found concerns ranging from uncertain income to fear of contracting the virus during pregnancy investigations.

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

China has not yet released nationwide population data from 2020, but several local governments have a double-digit percentage decline in the number of births from 2019.

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

The number of births in Japan fell by 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 fresh wave of Covid-19 cases hit Japan. “It made it a lot harder for me to visit the clinic,” said the 34-year-old working mother of a 3-year-old boy. Me. Matsui, who naturally became pregnant with her first baby, struggled to become a second baby before starting treatment in August. “I’ll keep it off 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 by [email protected]