ROME – Angela Di Iorio already wanted to be pregnant with her first baby. Instead, the 36-year-old Italian, who has just postponed her marriage for the second time, is starting to wonder if she should have a child at all.
“Our plan was always to get married and then start a family,” says Ms. Di Iorio, an osteopath from Rome whose fiancé has been out of work for nearly a year since a gym they co-owned had to close. because of measures to stop the spread of Covid-19. “We no longer have the stability of my partner and I have worked so hard to achieve this. And I’m getting older, ”she said.
A year after the pandemic, early data and studies point to a baby crisis in many advanced economies, from the US to Europe to East Asia, often on top of existing downward trends in births.
A combination of health and economic crises is prompting many people to postpone or give up plans to have children. Demographers warn that the dip is unlikely to be temporary, especially if the pandemic and its economic ramifications persist.
“All evidence points to a sharp decline in fertility rates and birth rates 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 fertility rates.”