The United States' birth rate was already declining before the pandemic, and in the last two years, the numbers have dipped even further.
Despite all the extra time people have been spending at home, there were 4% fewer births in 2020 than there were in 2019, according to data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.
The number of births in 2020 is the lowest its been since 1979.
For the number of babies born in late 2020 and early 2021, "We tabulate that that accumulates to about 60,000 fewer births during that initial period," said Phillip Levine, Professor of Economics at Wellesley College in an interview with KCBS Radio.
Levine's findings, released in December with a colleague, Melissa Kearney, reflect a smaller than expected baby bust than originally predicted. They predicted that there would be 300,000 fewer births because of factors such as the recession and the general uncertainty caused by the pandemic.
"You might not have had any understanding of what would happen in the medical care system," he said. "What would happen if you went to the hospital and the doctors weren’t available because they were treating COVID patients, for instance."
After studying the trend, Levine found that those factors, in particular, didn’t play as significant a role as he initially thought, but still contributed.
He believes government assistance might have helped bolster family finances during those first unpredictable months.
Birth rates have since stabilized, but they're still quite low compared to just a decade or two earlier, according to Levine, 800,000 fewer babies are being born per year than there were 15 years ago.
"Maybe they will revert back to pre-pandemic levels. but it's hard to imagine that they will be returning to the much higher levels of birth that we observed 15 years ago," said Levine.
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