The Covid-19 Baby Bump: The Unexpected Increase in U.S. Fertility Rates in Response to the Pandemic

Martha Bailey, Janet Currie and Hannes Schwandt

No 30569, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We use natality microdata covering the universe of U.S. births for 2015-2021 and California births from 2015 through February 2023 to examine childbearing responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that 60% of the 2020 decline in U.S. fertility rates was driven by sharp reductions in births to foreign-born mothers although births to this group comprised only 22% of all U.S. births in 2019. This decline started in January 2020. In contrast, the COVID-19 recession resulted in an overall “baby bump” among U.S.-born mothers which marked the first reversal in declining fertility rates since the Great Recession. Births to U.S.-born mothers fell by 31,000 in 2020 relative to a pre-pandemic trend but increased by 71,000 in 2021. The data for California suggest that U.S. births remained elevated through February 2023. The baby bump was most pronounced for first births and women under age 25, suggesting that the pandemic led some women to start families earlier. Above age 25, the baby bump was most pronounced for women ages 30-34 and women with a college education. The 2021-2022 baby bump is especially remarkable given the large declines in fertility rates that would have been projected by standard statistical models.

JEL-codes: J0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Note: CH EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30569.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The COVID-19 Baby Bump: The Unexpected Increase in U.S. Fertility Rates in Response to the Pandemic (2022)
Working Paper: The Covid-19 Baby Bump: The Unexpected Increase in U.S. Fertility Rates in Response to the Pandemic (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30569

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30569

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().