Luther12
Elder Lister
P.D. James’s 1992 dystopian novel, The Children of Men, imagines a world where a rapidly ageing human race has become infertile. Coincidentally, the novel begins in 2021 with the death of the last human to be born on Earth. Although the real 2021 is not quite as dramatic, the number of births is plummeting around the world. A COVID-19 baby bust is underway.
A year into the pandemic, it is clear that being quarantined at home has not resulted in more pregnancies—despite having all the time in the world for Netflix and chill. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have had the opposite effect: Provisional data coming nine months after most countries locked down last March suggest a steep fall in births across the developed world and in some emerging markets.
In the United States, for example, there were 7.7 percent fewer births in December 2020 than during the same period in 2019. This January, Arizona, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida all recorded declines of roughly 9 percent on an annual basis. While in February, California saw a dramatic 19 percent drop, in part due to families leaving the state.
It’s a similar picture across the Atlantic Ocean, as January birth reports suggest that Europe is faring no better. Hungary is down 9.4 percent on an annual basis. Russia saw a drop of 10.3 percent, France of 13.2 percent, Spain of 20 percent, and Poland a whopping 24.7 percent. Even Sweden, which enforced less severe restrictions on mobility last year, recorded a 6.4 percent drop. All told, if this trend continues, there could be 400,000 fewer Europeans by the end of 2021.
In Asia, too, a baby bust is underway. Births in Japan and South Korea, which are already home to some of the oldest societies in the world, plunged almost 8 percent in December 2020. Meanwhile in China, the first country to be hit by the pandemic, cities like Guangzhou and Wenzhou reported declines of between 19 percent and almost 33 percent.
Although it flies in the face of most jokes, the baby bust is in line with historical evidence. High-fatality events like pandemics and economic crises both tend to be followed by a decline in natality.
At the height of the influenza pandemic in 1919 in the United States, for example, the number of births dropped by 7.1 percent on an annual basis compared with 3.8 percent in 2020. Unlike today, most fatalities during the Spanish flu were adults of child-bearing age, which in part explains why the decline was so steep.
And when Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana in 2005, it caused more than 1,800 deaths and $125 billion in damage. Then, too, the number of births dropped in the immediate aftermath. A year after the hurricane hit, births had fallen 19 percent in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-designated disaster counties.
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A year into the pandemic, it is clear that being quarantined at home has not resulted in more pregnancies—despite having all the time in the world for Netflix and chill. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have had the opposite effect: Provisional data coming nine months after most countries locked down last March suggest a steep fall in births across the developed world and in some emerging markets.
In the United States, for example, there were 7.7 percent fewer births in December 2020 than during the same period in 2019. This January, Arizona, Iowa, Ohio, and Florida all recorded declines of roughly 9 percent on an annual basis. While in February, California saw a dramatic 19 percent drop, in part due to families leaving the state.
It’s a similar picture across the Atlantic Ocean, as January birth reports suggest that Europe is faring no better. Hungary is down 9.4 percent on an annual basis. Russia saw a drop of 10.3 percent, France of 13.2 percent, Spain of 20 percent, and Poland a whopping 24.7 percent. Even Sweden, which enforced less severe restrictions on mobility last year, recorded a 6.4 percent drop. All told, if this trend continues, there could be 400,000 fewer Europeans by the end of 2021.
In Asia, too, a baby bust is underway. Births in Japan and South Korea, which are already home to some of the oldest societies in the world, plunged almost 8 percent in December 2020. Meanwhile in China, the first country to be hit by the pandemic, cities like Guangzhou and Wenzhou reported declines of between 19 percent and almost 33 percent.
Although it flies in the face of most jokes, the baby bust is in line with historical evidence. High-fatality events like pandemics and economic crises both tend to be followed by a decline in natality.
At the height of the influenza pandemic in 1919 in the United States, for example, the number of births dropped by 7.1 percent on an annual basis compared with 3.8 percent in 2020. Unlike today, most fatalities during the Spanish flu were adults of child-bearing age, which in part explains why the decline was so steep.
And when Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana in 2005, it caused more than 1,800 deaths and $125 billion in damage. Then, too, the number of births dropped in the immediate aftermath. A year after the hurricane hit, births had fallen 19 percent in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)-designated disaster counties.

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