Covid Effect: There Might Be Fewer Babies Next Year

People are delaying and even abandoning plans to have children due to depressed incomes, job losses and anxiety about getting sick

- Abhilash.Gaur

When the lockdowns started in March, some pundits predicted a baby boom after nine months. Couples locked up together with little to do would use the time to procreate, they said. Nobody knew the lockdowns would last so long, or the pandemic would cause so much economic devastation. Now, it looks like there will be a ‘baby bust’ next year, which is bad news for the ageing countries of Europe and North America.

FALSE PREMISE

The idea that couples have more sex in stressful situations, such as storms and floods, is an old one. It is also called the ‘blackout hypothesis’ after a series of New York Times articles that attributed a spurt in births, in August 1966, to the New York City blackout of November 9, 1965.

However, later research showed “no statistically significant increase or decrease in the number of conceptions during the blackout,” Richard W Evans, who teaches computational social science at the University of Chicago, wrote in the Washington Post in March.

Evans’ own research during Florida’s storms in 2010 showed that a low-level tropical storm alert led to a 2% increase in births, but a severe storm warning resulted in a 2% decline. “You can’t make babies if you’re running for your life,” he says. The Covid pandemic has already done more harm than the worst storm or quake.