The Great Pandemic Baby Bump
November 2, 2022
When the pandemic began, I didn’t place any bets on what the future would hold. But if I had, I would certainly be out a lot of money. One of my expectations was that pandemic-induced economic uncertainty would result in a baby bust. I had research on my side indicating that unemployment leads to reduced conceptions. Others made similar predictions—Brookings Institution researchers forecast in June 2020 that the pandemic would result in up to half a million fewer births in 2021. “Recessions mean fewer children,” they wrote.
But they, and I, were wrong. Couples didn’t let pandemic isolation go to waste. A new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) actually detected an American baby bump in 2021, the first major reversal in declining domestic fertility rates since 2007. In total, about 46,000 more kids are running around out there than anticipated. Or perhaps crawling around.
