Summer Lightning Offer
The COVID pandemic has caused fertility rates to decline in the U. S. In the U. S. , but red states have seen increases
Anna McCleary had her daughter in October 2019. McCleary, who works at a law firm in Chicago, had just returned from maternity leave in early 2020 when the COVID pandemic hit. She and her husband found themselves running away from home without access to daycare or other support. “We were thrown into this kind of nightmare situation of [having] all your responsibilities, without any of the safety nets you expect when you have a child,” McCleary says. She and her husband had planned at all times to have two children, however, as the pandemic progressed, adding a momentary child to their circle of relatives seemed impossible. “We may do it with our money,” he says, but “we may not do it with our time. “At 40, she fears she has lost the opportunity to have a momentary child.
McCleary’s party is not unusual. At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, experts predicted a baby boom because they thought other people forced to stay home to avoid the virus had more time to conceive children. Instead, the opposite happened: a baby bust. However, while the country as a whole has noticed a decline in fertility rates in the first year of the pandemic, a recent examination suggests that rates in some states have increased.
The study, which was published in April in Human Reproduction, found that the fertility rate in the U. S. has been falling sharply. UU. se reduced by 17. 5 births per month by 100,000 women of reproductive age after the first wave of the pandemic from early to mid-2020. It then returned to a pre-pandemic rate of decline after the wave so far in the fall and winter of 2020. The states and regions that revealed the largest fertility declines were more likely to have an increase consistent with the consistent percentage of Democrats and nonwhite, more social citizens. distancing. Conversely, states with more Republicans, fewer non-white citizens and less social distancing were more likely to enjoy increased fertility.
Throughout the history of fashion, fertility has declined after economic emergencies such as the stock market crash of 1929 and the recession of 2008. But fertility rates in the United States have been on a downward slope since some time before 2008, and the decline is consistent with a similar trend in other wealthy countries in Europe and parts of Asia.
“We’ve noticed that there’s been this [before the pandemic], a downward trend in fertility rates over time. And we’ve also found that fertility rates drop dramatically after emergencies, especially economic ones,” says Sarah Adelman, an associate for studies in environmental pediatrics. at NYU Langone Health. ” COVID wasn’t just a biological pandemic. It was social; It was economical. His team sought to know: what effect has this had on fertility rates?
Previous studies have shown that fertility rates have declined during the pandemic, but they haven’t actually looked at differences between states. Adelman and colleagues analyzed adjustments in fertility rates in all 50 states and Washington, D. C. The first two waves of the pandemic. To do this, they used knowledge from the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U. S. Census EE. UU. de 2020, and the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Public Service Center, which estimated the state’s populations nine months after each COVID wave in 2021. (Nine months is the average length of pregnancy. )
While many states, such as New York and Connecticut, saw their fertility rates drop in their first waves of COVID in 2020, others, such as Utah and Idaho, saw them rise. In this study, adjustments in fertility rate did not correlate with the severity of the COVID Wave in any specific state. Instead, they were tied to the state’s political orientation: red states saw a greater increase in fertility, while blue states saw more decreases. Fertility rates were also negatively correlated with the degree of social distancing, which was measured through GPS knowledge of mobile phones analyzed by researchers at the University of Maryland. States with the largest fertility declines also tended to have higher proportions of nonwhite residents.
The findings suggest that the extent to which states or regions took the virus “seriously” affected the likelihood that fertility rates would decline or rise, Adelman says. In general, citizens of Democratic-leaning states and Washington, D. C. , tended to view COVID as a greater threat, while citizens of Republican-leaning states were less likely to view the disease as dangerous. In addition, the blue states of the Northeast were the hardest hit by the first wave of COVID, so citizens of those states would have been more likely to treat it as a threat. These states also have a higher proportion of other people of color, a disproportionate number of whom have lost their jobs and possibly would have felt unable to care for more children, Adelman says. The study did not control for the effect of COVID infection itself on live birth rates, the disease poses a risk.
Philip Cohen, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study, says the conclusion that the political climate and pandemic reaction would affect fertility rates is “very reasonable,” but the interpretation is somewhat complicated. Too much weight to the conclusion for several reasons. The first is, you know, births are relatively rare, and in the United States, a fairly large percentage of births are not accurately planned. So even if there has been a replacement in fertility rate, it’s hard to know if it’s because other people deliberately chose to have fewer or more children. In addition, some U. S. states have not been able to do so. U. S. citizens have a high percentage of young children born to other people who live outside the country but travel here to give birth, so some of the declines in fertility rates are possibly due to the fact that those other people were unable to enter the U. S. “The U. S. is due to a pandemic lockdowns,” Cohen says.
Adelman also notes that the study was malnourished because there were only 51 data problems (50 states and Washington, D. C. ), limiting the conclusions that can be drawn from it.
However, the data suggests that in declining states, fertility rates have recovered somewhat after the current COVID wave. The arrival of effective COVID vaccines and a general relaxation of pandemic restrictions could have contributed to this uptick, as cases have allowed others to recover. expanding their families again, Adelman says.
McCleary and her husband are now discussing whether they might need to go out to have a momentary child, but she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to. a little more reasonable?” he said. But I’m 40 years old. It would possibly be possible, but not without significant intervention. Therefore, it would possibly have robbed us of our ability or our selection to make that resolution because we postponed it.
Arab-American scientist
It supports science journalism.
Thank you for Scientific American. Knowledge awaits.
Already a subscriber? identify.
Thank you for Scientific American. Create your single account or log in to continue.
View subscription options
Follow with a Scientific American subscription.
You can cancel at any time.