Pandemic is responsible for falling birth rates in much of Europe

It’s not just that many more people are dying from the coronavirus pandemic. In several countries, far fewer were born.

The French national statistical institute was one of the first to release figures on the number of children born in January – nine months after the country was stuck in its first Covid-19 lockdown – and provisional data shows a surprising drop: the month, 13% less than the January 2020 figure.

For France, the country which traditionally has the highest fertility rate of the 27 members of the EU, it has marked the largest drop in births since the abrupt end of the baby boom in the 1970s.

Births also fell 7% in the previous month compared to the same period a year earlier, leaving the total number of babies born in France last year, 735,000, at the lowest level since the end of the second. world War.

“There are a lot of fantasies that when couples get together at home, they will have more children. But it’s an idyllic vision, ”said Anne Solaz of INED, the French National Institute for Demographic Studies. “In fact, there are some who have a hard time being together all the time.”

Preliminary data also shows a sharp drop in the number of births in Spain and Italy, two countries already facing the challenge of an aging population. Evidence points to similar trends in the UK and the US as well.

A collapse in the number of newborns in industrialized economies following a pandemic or economic crisis – like the depression of the 1930s or the oil crisis of 1973 – is usually no surprise to demographers. Potential parents usually worry about job security and their ability to support their offspring.

“What is different this time is that the decline in births is really important,” said Arnaud Regnier-Loilier, Research Director of Ined. “It’s a bit unprecedented, but the crisis is also unprecedented.”

He pointed to the “great anguish” and “climate of fear” of the past year as people worried not only about their livelihoods, but also about the risk – now known to be very low – of young people. children get sick from the virus.

Italy, the first European country to feel the full force of the Covid-19 crisis, recorded 21.6% fewer births in December – nine months after the country’s lockdown – compared to the same month the previous year .

For all of 2020, Italy’s national statistical agency Istat said there were around 400,000 births, up from 420,000 the previous year, while the country recorded 647,000 deaths – leaving the largest gap between two since the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.

Istat linked the collapse in births to the collapse in the number of marriages, which fell by more than 50% in the first 10 months of last year, meaning couples were less likely to try to d ‘have a baby before they can hold their wedding.

France also recorded fewer marriages last year. They were down 34% from 2019, largely because wedding celebrations were first banned and then subject to restrictions on the number of guests.

Registered births have fallen in Spain in the wake of the pandemic – there was a 22 percent year-over-year drop in December and a 23 percent drop in January – although the difficulty of registering a birth at the height of the crisis may have affected the reliability of some of the monthly figures.

If the baby bust were to persist, it would have profound implications for economies and societies, affecting everything from immigration to education and pensions. However, it is not necessarily a global phenomenon.

The pandemic appears to have triggered a birth boom in the Philippines, with the UN warning that difficulty obtaining contraception and medical care has led to an increase in unwanted pregnancies and deaths during childbirth.

There are also signs that some northern European countries have not been affected or may have experienced the opposite of the trend seen in France, Italy and Spain.

Sweden saw a 6.4% drop in the number of births in January, according to figures released this week by the country’s statistics office, but the Netherlands and Finland have both reversed years of decline and reported slight year-over-year increases in new babies in January.

Covid-19 did not hit the Nordic countries and parts of northern Europe as hard as some other countries, especially at the start, which may explain why birth rates there were higher at the start of this year .

The question now is whether the decline in births in affected countries is a temporary failure or a trend that will persist. “Usually when there are crises, once they have passed, there is a tendency to revert to a fertility level close to or higher than before the crisis,” said Regnier-Loilier.

However, Teresa Castro, a demographer at Spain’s National Research Council, predicted that births for all of 2021 could drop very significantly.

“I don’t think this is a transitory phenomenon,” she said. “Uncertainties are one of the main reasons people don’t have children. And people still face significant health uncertainties, especially economic ones. “

Additional reporting by Miles Johnson in Rome, John Reed in Bangkok and Richard Milne in Oslo