Update: This article has been updated with additional statements reporting recent birth data.
When the pandemic first hit the U.S., many joked that widespread blockades would cause a ‘baby boom’ and sky-high birth rates. But almost a year later, it turns out to be the opposite.
Preliminary birth data data provided to CBS News by 29 state health departments show a decline in births of about 7.3% 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 and dropped to 32,910 births in December from 36,651 the previous year. In the same time frame, births decreased by 30.4% in Hawaii.
While birth rates have been falling for nearly a decade, Phil Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, said the decline in December was the largest he had seen since the baby boom ended in 1964.
“The scale of this is really huge,” Cohen said in a telephone interview with CBS News. “Whether you think it’s good or bad to have many children, the fact that we suddenly have fewer means that things are not going well for many people.”
As more states report birth data, the rate of decline may change. Texas, which makes up nearly 9% of the U.S. population, will only have December data until the end of March. Birth rates for New York, the fourth most populous state, were only available until 2018.
“We do not know if this is the beginning of a larger decline over the entire next year and if it is just a shock from March,” Cohen said. “But I’m more inclined to think, based on history, that next year is going to be a lot less for births.”
In June, the Brookings Institution speculated that the pandemic would lead to 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births in 2021, citing “tremendous economic loss, uncertainty and uncertainty.” The brainstorm later revised the forecast to 300,000 due to “a labor market that has improved somewhat faster than we expected”, but noted that new issues such as widespread school and daycare closures could also lead to fewer births.
Among the 32 states that had annual data available, there were approximately 95,000 fewer births in 2020 compared to the previous year, a decrease of approximately 4.4%, according to data compiled by CBS News. Every state has reported a decline, with the exception of New Hampshire, which reported four additional births in 2020 compared to 2019.
The initial data is in line with a survey early in the pandemic conducted 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 their pregnancy or that they wanted fewer children due to the pandemic.
“What we’re seeing now is the attitudes that play out in their actual behavior,” said Laura Lindberg, the lead research scientist at Guttmacher, who wrote the study.
Turbulent economic conditions and weak labor markets have historically led to declines in birth rates. But Lindberg says the decline due to the pandemic is far greater than would normally be expected; in the aftermath of the Great Recession, birth rates dropped by only about 3%.
“The impact of COVID on our lives is unprecedented and it is far from over,” Lindberg said in a telephone interview with CBS News. “Until people feel more confident about the economy and the state of the world, the concern about children will continue.”