Update: This article has been updated with other states reporting recent births.
When the pandemic first hit the United States, many joked that large-scale blockages would trigger a “baby boom” and high birth rates. But almost a year later, the opposite seems to be true.
Provisional birth rate data provided to CBS News by 29 state health departments show a drop of about 7.3% in births 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, down from 32,910 births in December from 36,651 the previous year. Over the same period, births fell by 30.4% in Hawaii.
While the birth rate has been falling for nearly a decade, Phil Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, said the decline in December was the largest he has seen since the 1964 baby boom.
“The scale of this is very large,” 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 aren’t going well for many people.”
As more states report birth data, the rate of decline may change. Texas, which accounts for nearly 9 percent of the U.S. population, will have no data from December until the end of March. Birth data for New York, the fourth most populous state, were only available until 2018.
“We don’t know if it’s the beginning of a bigger decline next year or if it’s just a March shock,” Cohen said. “But I’m more inclined, based on history, to believe that next year will be very low for births.”
In June, the Brookings Institution speculated that the pandemic will lead to 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births in 2021, citing “extraordinary economic losses, uncertainty and insecurity.” The focus group later revised the forecast to 300,000 due to “a labor market that has improved somewhat faster than we anticipated,” but noted that new issues, such as large-scale school closures and day care, could leads to fewer births.
Of the 32 states that had annual data available, there were about 95,000 fewer births in 2020 compared to the previous year, a decrease of about 4.4%, according to data compiled by CBS News. Each state reported a decline, with the exception of New Hampshire, which reported four more births in 2020 compared to 2019.
The initial data are according to a survey conducted at the beginning of the pandemic by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group in the field of reproductive health. The survey, published in May, found that about a third of women said they were late in pregnancy or wanted fewer children because of the pandemic.
“What we see now are those attitudes that unfold in their real behaviors,” said Laura Lindberg, Guttmacher’s lead research scientist, who authorized the study.
Turbulent economic conditions and weak labor markets have historically led to declining birth rates. But Lindberg says the decline from the pandemic is much larger than would normally be expected; Following the Great Recession, the birth rate fell by only about 3%.
“The impact of COVID on our lives is unprecedented and is far from over right now,” Lindberg said in a telephone interview with CBS News. “Until people feel more confident about the economy and the state of the world, concerns about having children will continue.”