The bust of baby Covid-19 is here

One year after the pandemic, early data and surveys indicate a child accident in many advanced economies from the US to Europe and East Asia, often in addition to downward trends in births.

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

“All the evidence indicates 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 conception plans the following year.

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

The Brookings Institution estimated in December that as a result of the pandemic, 300,000 fewer children would be born in the United States in 2021 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 about 1%.

For many countries, detailed data on births at the end of 2020 are still a few months away. Where numbers are available, they are not encouraging.

Japan, France and Belgium are among the countries that have reported unusually sharp declines in births nine months after the start of the pandemic, compared to a year earlier. In France, the number of births in January fell by 13.5% compared to a year earlier, a much sharper decline than the monthly decline of 1.7% on average in the first 10 months of 2020.

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

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

Births in Italy fell by 21.6% in December compared to the previous year, according to the first estimates of the Italian statistical agency, based on data from 15 major cities. This is a much larger decrease than in the first 10 months of 2020, when births fell by an average of 3.3%. Overall, in 2020, almost twice as many people died in Italy as were born there.

The continuing medical emergency in Italy and Europe and the struggle for economic recovery mean that the baby crisis is unlikely to end soon. An added factor is the long-term impact of people not being able to start new relationships during the pandemic.

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

Historically, traumatic events, such as pandemics, wars, and economic crises, have often led to fewer births. Some baby busts are short-lived and followed by recoveries. But the longer a crisis lasts, the more likely it is that potential births will not only be delayed, but never happen, demographers say.

For example, no recovery has followed the global financial crisis. The US birth rate – after rising to its highest level in decades in 2007 – has fallen since the 2008 crisis and has fallen steadily since then.

Declining births are bad news for advanced economies. Young people fuel innovation, stimulate growth and are needed to finance pensions and health systems in older societies. A shortage of workers makes it difficult to sustain productivity growth.

This is a concern in China. The most populous country in the world is already on the verge of declining births due to the persistent effects of its one-child policy, abolished at the end of 2015 after three decades.

Chinese couples may now have two children, but many who were not determined to have a first or second child have postponed their plans to 2020. Surveys have raised concerns ranging from uncertain incomes to fears of contracting the virus during controls maternity leave.

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

China has not yet released national data for 2020, but several local governments have reported double-digit percentage declines in births since 2019.

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

The number of births in Japan decreased by 9.3% in December compared to a year earlier, compared to an average of 2.3% in the first 10 months of 2020.

Haruka Matsui stopped going to fertility treatment in December, when a new wave of Covid-19 cases hit Japan. “It made it much harder for me to visit the clinic,” said the 34-year-old working mother of a 3-year-old boy. Ms. Matsui, who became pregnant naturally for her first child, struggled to conceive a second one before starting treatment in August. “I’ll stop him for a while, because I’m not that old.”

—Miho Inada of Tokyo and Liyan Qi of New York contributed to this article.

Write to Margherita Stancati at [email protected]