EXPERTS PREDICT effects on birthrates globally.

Populations seen dropping in richer areas, rising in poorer

With millions of people cut off from reproductive health care and stuck at home, some experts predicted that the covid-19 crisis would create the conditions for a baby boom, at least in some countries. Other analysts predicted a baby bust, driven by economic and social instability.

It’s still too early to say for sure, but birthrate trends so far suggest spikes in some parts of the world and declines in others. Broadly speaking, birthrates should continue to drop in many higher-income countries and climb in many poor and middle-income nations, where the U.N. Population Fund projects that pandemic-driven disruptions in access to contraception could lead to millions of unplanned pregnancies.

■ In India, the country implemented one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. Between March and May, about 1.85 million women were estimated to have been unable to gain access to abortions they otherwise would have sought, according to an estimate by the Ipas Development Foundation, which focuses on safe abortions and contraception in India. Another study by the Delhi-based Foundation for Reproductive Health Services India calculated in May that about 25 million couples could have been cut off from contraception access during the country’s shutdown.

■ Health care providers in Indonesia are also bracing for more births in coming months. About 10 million married couples across the world’s fourth-largest country stopped using contraception in April amid lockdown measures, according to the country’s national population and family planning agency, The New York Times reported.

In addition to disrupting local services, the pandemic has posed obstacles for the global supply chain for condoms and other forms of birth control, the Atlantic reported.

■ In the United States, analysts are watching a different trend emerge: Many women say they are likely to hold off on having children during the pandemic. Some companies have seen growth in the sale of contraceptives.

In June, the Brookings Institution estimated that the United States would see its birthrate drop by 300,000 to 500,000 over the coming year, based on fertility trends during past recessions and crises. That same month, the digital health clinic Nurx told USA Today that it has seen a 50% rise in birth control requests and a 40% increase in emergency contraception orders.

■ Europe was already grappling with an aging population and declining birthrates and family sizes before the pandemic. That baby-bust trend looks likely to deepen during the crisis, according to a June study by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“One of the consequences of this particular health emergency has been one of the most severe economic crises of the last century, with such events always being followed by a decline in fertility rates,” Francesca Luppi, Bruno Arpino and Alessandro Rosina, the co-authors of the report, said in a statement.

Fifty percent or more of respondents in France, Spain and Germany said they would postpone having children. In the United Kingdom, 58 percent said they would postpone, and 19 percent said they would abandon childbearing altogether.