Update: This article has been updated with additional states reporting recent birth data.
When the pandemic first hit the US, many joked that widespread lockdowns would trigger a “baby boom” and skyrocketing birth rates. But almost a year later, the opposite turns out to be true.
Preliminary birth figures provided to CBS News by 29 state health departments show a decline in the number of births of about 7.3% 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, dropping to 32,910 births in December from 36,651 the year before. Over the same time frame, the number of births in Hawaii dropped by 30.4%.
Although the birth rate has been declining for nearly a decade, Phil Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, said the December drop was the largest he’s seen since the baby boom ended in 1964.
“The scale of this is very large,” Cohen said in a telephone interview with CBS News. “Whether you think it is good or bad to have a lot of children, the fact that we suddenly have less means that things are not going well for many people.”
As more states report birth data, the rate of decline may change. Texas, which makes up nearly 9% of the US population, won’t have data for December until the end of March. Birth rates for New York, the fourth most populous state, were only available through 2018.
“We don’t know if this is the start of a bigger year-round decline or if it’s just a shock from March,” Cohen said. “But I’m more inclined based on history to think that there will be a lot of births all year round.”
In June, the Brookings Institute speculated that the pandemic would result in 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births by 2021, citing “massive economic loss, uncertainty and uncertainty.” The think tank later adjusted the forecast to 300,000 because of “a job market improving a little faster than we expected,” but noted that new issues such as widespread school and daycare closures could also lead to fewer births.
Of the 32 states that had annual data, there were about 95,000 fewer births in 2020 compared to the year before, a decrease of about 4.4%, according to data collected by CBS News. Each state reported a decrease, with the exception of New Hampshire, which reported four additional births in 2020 compared to 2019.
The first data is in line with a survey conducted at the beginning of the pandemic by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group. The study published in May found that about a third of women said they were delaying their pregnancy or wanting fewer children because of the pandemic.
“What we’re seeing now is that attitude that plays out in their actual behavior,” said Laura Lindberg, the lead researcher at Guttmacher who wrote the study.
Turbulent economic conditions and weak labor markets have led to a decline in birth rates in the past. But Lindberg says the decline due to the pandemic is much greater than would normally be expected; in the wake of the Great Recession, birth rates have only fallen by about 3%.
“The impact of COVID on our lives is unprecedented and far from over,” 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.”