ECON27ILLUSTRATION
BY
DEREK
ZHENG.
DATA:
NATIONAL
CENTER
FOR
HEALTH
is likelytogreatlyexceedthenumberofAmericans
who’vediedfromcoronavirus,whichis nowabout
150,000. The effect on population will be longer-
lasting as well: Many of the babies who aren’t being
born would have lived into the 22nd century.
“A lot of people I know at work and friends
are saying they don’t want to have children until
this is over,” says Tori Marsh, director of research
at GoodRx Inc., a price-comparison and coupon
site for prescription drugs based in Santa Monica,
Calif. Marsh, 29, postponed her wedding, which
had been scheduled for November, because of the
pandemic. “It is definitely pushing back the time-
line” for babies, she says.
If couples fully make up for lost time by hav-
ing more children later, this drop in the birthrate
will end up being just a blip. But demographers
predict that many, if not most, of the births that
are delayed will never be made up. “There is this
Panglossian narrative that delayed births will
tend to recover, but statistically it doesn’t hap-
pen,” says Lyman Stone, chief information officer
of Demographic Intelligence, a consulting firm
whose clients have included Procter & Gamble
and JPMorgan Chase.
Lack of time is the most important reason the
birthrate is unlikely to revert back to trend once
the pandemic is over. While young women will
still have plenty of years to give birth to their
desired number of children, older ones will need
to space births more tightly to reach their targets
in their remaining fertile years. Some will run out
their biological clock waiting for baby-making
conditions to improve.Pandas and white rhinosa
that are unsuccessfulatm
folk wisdom that humans
with nothing else todo
babies theory—surfaces
diate aftermath of disaste
never materializes.
The Covid-19 pandemicspawnedpredictions
that stay-at-home orders would eventually deliver
a baby bump. Yet far from having more children
than usual, Americans are expecting fewer.
In bedrooms across the U.S., couples are mak-
ing decisions that, in the aggregate, could prove as
consequential for the long-term health of our econ-
omy as those taken by policymakers in Washington.
Fewer children now means fewer consumers, work-
ers, and taxpayers in the future. In other words, a
smaller economy than otherwise—though also a
smaller environmental footprint, which brings its
own rewards.
Wolfgang Lutz, an Austrian demographer,
warned in 2006 that European nations were at
risk of falling into a “fertility trap” in which there
are fewer women alive to have babies; smaller
families become the social norm; and low pop-
ulation growth reduces economic growth, fos-
tering a pessimism that further suppresses the
birthrate. It appears that Denmark, among oth-
ers, has taken Lutz’s message to heart. A public
serviceannouncementurgesolder Danes, “Send
yourchildonanactiveholidayand get a grand-
c ildwit i i e o t s.”
d the alarm, the U.S.
cha trap, with a total
children per woman,
ographers call the
acement rate, vs. 1.5
heEuropean Union.
Nowthat the U.S. rate
is below 1.7, that’s no
onger assured.
Unromanticasit sounds,planning a family is
a numbersexercisethatfactors in the age of the
would-bemother,accesstoaffordable child care,
college costs, income, and job security. Toss in a
national health emergency and an economic crisis
that invites comparisons to the Great Depression,
and the benefits of parenthood no longer pencil out
for many. The Guttmacher Institute surveyed about
2,000 American women in late April and early May
and found that 34% wanted to delay pregnancy or
have fewer children as a result of the pandemic.
That outweighed the 17% who said they wanted
children sooner or more of them.
In June the Brookings Institution released a studyAmerica’s Fertility Has Declined
AnnualU.S.births
○ Years in which GDP contracted
4.4m4.03.6
1980 2019NOMICSSTATISTIC
S
cd t eots.
At thetimeLutzraised
seemedwellclearofsuc
fertilityrate of2.1c
what demo
repla
forth
N
i
l
U i it dBlooo usinessweek ,predictingtheU.S.is headedfor“alarge,lasting
babybust.”Itsresearchersforecasttherewillbe
3 00,000to500,000fewerchildrenbornintheU.S.
in 2021 thantherewouldhavebeenabsentthecrisis,
whichamountstoa decreaseofroughly10%from
2019. That means the numberof babies neverbornaren’tthe onlycreatures
matingincaptivity. The
swillcopulatewhenleft
—dubbedtheblackout
regularlyintheimme-
ers, but the baby boom