BIRTH RATES often fall during hard times, but the covid-19 pandemic was no ordinary economic downturn. On the one hand, people might hesitate to procreate amid such upheaval; on the other, the opportunity to work from home could make parenting more enticing. During the dark days of lockdowns, no one knew which of these effects would be greater.
At first glance, the data from America suggest that covid did prompt a small baby bust. Birth counts fell from 3.75m in 2019 to 3.62m in 2020, and rebounded only partway to 3.67m in 2021. However, a new study by Martha Bailey, Janet Currie and Hannes Schwandt reaches the surprising conclusion that despite this apparent decline, fertility rates among women born in America actually rose during the pandemic—the first big annual increase since 2007.
The first clue that data on total births might be misleading was the timing of the drop. Birth counts fell in early 2020, but most babies conceived after covid struck America in March 2020 would have been due in 2021. The study suggests instead that what changed in 2020 was not whether women gave birth, but where.
In 2019, 23% of newborns in America had foreign-born mothers. Breaking down the data on pandemic-era births by mothers’ origin, the researchers found a striking discrepancy: foreign-born women gave birth to 91,000 fewer babies than pre-pandemic trends would suggest, whereas native-born ones had 46,000 more.
The study did not assess how much of the dip stemmed from fewer foreign-born women entering the country and then giving birth, and how much from immigrants already in America deciding to leave. But given that America closed its borders for non-essential travel in 2020, a reduction in new arrivals—including those who visit briefly to have an American-citizen child, and then leave—seems more likely.
The researchers speculated that the shift to remote work explained much of native-born women’s rise in fertility. The increase was most marked among the college-educated, who are more likely to be able to work from home, in a country without any paid maternity-leave requirement or child-care subsidy.
The baby bump may be temporary. But continued flexibility for couples to spend time with their babies might mean they make more of them in future too.■
Chart sources: “The covid-19 baby bump: the unexpected increase in US fertility rates in response to the pandemic”, by M.J. Bailey, J. Currie and H. Schwandt, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2022, working paper; National Centre for Health Statistics; kidscount.org
