The impact of Covid-19 on the world population is not only measured by the dizzying increase in the number of deaths, it can also be read in a lower birth rate. The fear of an uncertain future and the immediate economic repercussions of the current health crisis have curbed the desire for children, putting it off at least until later. The first wave of contagion and the confinements of spring 2020 therefore draw like a hitch in the demographic curves nine months later, from November. However, these are only estimates or initial statistics: in this area too, the world is very unequally served.
In total, the missing cradles should number in the millions, unevenly. The pandemic has not struck with the same violence everywhere, nor caused the same anxieties in the countries which have turned away from maternity hospitals, and in those where it has interrupted access to contraception.
Using the human fertility database from the demographic institutes at the University of Vienna, Austria, and Max-Planck in Germany, Tomas Sobotka and his team of researchers looked at the latest figures released by 34 countries. They underline that in fifteen members of the European Union, the birth rate plunges on average by 3% in October, 5% in November, then by 8.1% in December 2020 (the data that we report are systematically indicated in relation to the previous year or the corresponding period one year earlier). With falls in January 2021 of 10.3% in Russia, 23.3% in Taiwan among others, “The initial speculations on a possible baby boom have largely dissipated”, write the authors of this study. They predict a “baby flop” effect in 2020, followed by a “baby crash” in 2021 in Europe, eastern Asia and the United States.
Demographic decline
It is too early for global US statistics, but several studies unsurprisingly converge on the dreaded effect of SARS-CoV-2 on the birth rate. Philip Cohen, of the University of Maryland, announces a drop of 3.8% in Florida and Ohio in 2020. He notes above all a drop of 6% in November, then of 8% in December, as a consequence of the first effects social aspects of the pandemic. The counties with the greatest contamination and mobility limitations are also those with the largest declines. The researcher reports that nine states which have monthly balance sheets recorded a drop of 5% to 10% for the last two months of the year.
You have 82.47% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.