Among the pandemic’s lasting impact could be a COVID-19 baby bust

The economic and public health fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic could result in an impending “baby bust.” A new report published by Brookings suggests that the U.S. could see a decline of between 300,000 to 500,000 births if the labor market continues to suffer beyond this year.

Economic factors have impacted birth rates throughout history, say authors Melissa S. Kearney, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, and Phillip Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College.

“In the analytical terms of economic modeling, adults ‘choose’ the quantity of children that maximizes their lifetime well-being subject to the costs associated with childbearing. Such a framework predicts, all else equal, that a higher level of lifetime income leads people to have more children,” reads the report.

However, Kearney and Levine use the historical context of the Great Recession of 2002- 2009 and the 1918 Spanish Flu to illustrate that the opposite is true as well. For example, the report cites a 9% drop from 2007- 2012 in the rate of births per women ages 15 to 44, which equates to nearly 400,000 fewer births.

Parallels to 2020 may be found in an economy that has been similarly battered into a recession, only this time by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The report points to Federal Reserve forecasts that place the unemployment rate at 9.3% through the end of the year, as well as other predictions that estimate 42% of recent job losses will be permanent.

Kearney and Levine expect birth rates to respond accordingly. “An analysis of the Great Recession leads us to predict that women will have many fewer babies in the short term, and for some of them, a lower total number of children over their lifetimes,” reads the report.

But it’s not just the economics that could potentially drive the number of U.S. births downward. The psychological effects of the pandemic could also have a lasting impact, an argument that the report grounds in the fallout from the 1918 Spanish Flu, which saw a 12.5% drop in birth rates.

“The drop in births that resulted from the Spanish flu was likely due to the uncertainty and anxiety that a public health crisis can generate, which could affect people’s desire to give birth, and also biologically affect pregnancy and birth outcomes,” reads the report.

However,  Kearney and Levine suggested that COVID-19’s impact on birthing rates could be more severe than the Spanish flu, since wartime needs were continuing to drive manufacturing in 1918 despite the spread of the disease.

They anticipate that the psychological impact of the pandemic as well as lasting job losses will result in at least a 7 to 10% drop in births next year.

“We expect that many of these births will not just be delayed – but will never happen. There will be a COVID-19 baby bust,” reads the report.