Will Covid-19 Cause a Baby Boom — or Bust?
More than 40% of women are changing their procreational plans
In late winter of 2020, when quarantine still seemed like it would last just long enough to binge The Crown, Americans busied themselves with making masks, sourdough, and — many joked — babies.
Fast-forward to summer, however, and the bloom was off the rose. In June, digital health clinic Nurx told USA Today they’d seen a 50% increase in requests for birth control from patients. That same month, the Brookings Institute estimated that there could be between 300,000 and 500,000 fewer births in 2021. Also in June, a survey by the Guttmacher Institute reported that because of the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 40% of women are changing their plans about when to have children or how many children to have; 34% of women are planning to get pregnant later or have fewer children. (Women belonging to groups experiencing systemic inequalities long before the pandemic were even likelier to report wanting to delay pregnancy or shrink the size of their brood.)
What gives?
Pre-Covid-19, birth rates were already declining in the United States, from 60.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 2017 — the lowest number in 30 years — to 59.1 in 2018 and 58.3 in 2019. Now, some women fear that if they were to get…
