Sounds naïve now, doesn't it.
 | By Eleanor Barkhorn Staff Editor, Opinion |
When the stay-at-home orders started a year ago, predictions abounded for how the pandemic would transform our lives. Home cooking would mean we'd all eat healthier! We'd never shake hands again! |
And there would be a baby boom. There was a sweet, naïve logic to it: Couples stuck at home with nothing else to do would snuggle up and have babies. This was before we knew just how long the lockdowns would last, making couples more irritable than amorous after all that time together. Before we knew how punishing the pandemic would be to families that already had children, as day cares and schools remained closed for months on end. Before we knew how many Americans would lose their jobs, making having a baby seem financially out of reach. |
As early as June, two economists were pushing back on the baby boom talk. In a report for the Brookings Institution, Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine predicted a sizable baby bust of between 300,000 and 500,000 fewer births in 2021 than would have been expected without the pandemic. By December, they revised their prediction to the lower end of that range. |
In an Op-Ed for the Times today, they explain why we're likely to see 300,000 missing births this year. Their prediction is based on their analysis of a variety of data, from the way recessions typically depress birthrates to how the Spanish flu of 1918-1919 led to fewer babies than would otherwise be expected. |
It's still too early for a full accounting of the coronavirus's effect on the birthrate — January was the first month in which all full-term babies born were conceived after lockdown began. But the data available so far points to a bust: Melissa and Phillip write that in January 2021, "births fell by 7.2 percent in Florida and 10.5 percent in California, after adjusting for secular trends, seasonal variation and the use of provisional birth data." |
As they explain in their piece, this bust will have implications for individuals and families, as some couples will have fewer children than they'd hoped, and some kids will miss out on a sibling they might have had otherwise. On a societal level, we'll have to contend with a smaller work force and the resulting lower tax base, as well as fewer contributors to Social Security. |
There are no easy fixes here. As an editor, I always hope to include robust solutions in Op-Eds that present serious problems. This Op-Ed doesn't offer many. Instead it implores us to face reality: Like so many other problems presented by the pandemic, we're going to be living with the ripple effects of the baby bust for a long time. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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