Don’t expect post-quarantine baby boom

When the coronavirus reached the U.S. and the cascade of lockdown and shelter-in-place orders began, the joke on social media was that America was going to have a COVID-19 baby boom around Christmas.

The intimacy (and corresponding opportunity) afforded by a forced quarantine, combined with the existential fear caused by the virus, could result in only one thing.

But of all the pandemic-related predictions that won’t come to fruition, a COVID-19 baby boom will almost certainly be one of them.

And that isn’t a good thing. Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a devastating report about birth rates. For five consecutive years, the overall birth rate in the U.S. has dropped; last year, rates fell or held steady for women of all ages except those in their early 40s.

Overall, the 2019 birth rate ticked down to 1.7, a 35-year low, and well below replacement level, the rate needed to keep the population total stable.

Enter the coronavirus. Contrary to the conventional thinking that a major natural disaster would inspire Americans — suddenly sensing their own mortality — to grow their families, history tells us that the opposite is more likely.

According to Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, “events that cause a large increase in deaths tend to cause a large decrease in births nine months later.”

He cites natural disasters such as hurricanes and famines, as well as previous pandemics. Would-be parents may be traumatized by fear or concerned about how they would care for children during difficult and uncertain times.

Those declines are often temporary, Stone says, adding that fertility rates generally rebound in the years following a crisis.

But our current crisis isn’t just viral — it’s also economic.

Millions of Americans are newly out of work, and dozens of states are still months away from fully reopening. Fears of a second outbreak loom large and hopes of a V-shaped recovery are uncertain, at best.

The U.S. fertility rate still hasn’t fully recovered after the financial crisis of 2008. With millions of couples citing economic reasons for delaying pregnancy, there is good reason to believe that the post-corona birth rate will not follow the pattern of past pandemics.

This is bad for lots of reasons, some of which have been cast into stark relief during the pandemic, such as the devastating social and financial consequences of the ever-shrinking American family.

There are fewer children to help care for aging parents. And with people delaying families longer — fewer grandparents around to help care for grandchildren. The elderly are increasingly isolated. The young are increasingly without strong family networks to keep them grounded and connected.

Practically speaking, low birth rates foreshadow diminished economic prospects: larger public debts, slower growth and a shrinking workforce. That compounds existing economic woes.

But there are broader cultural concerns, too. Low-fertility societies “tend to lack confidence in the future,” writes National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty, “in part because there is a general consciousness that nobody is investing in it.”

The pandemic isn’t over, but the virus should no longer be our primary worry. Nor should our bank accounts. What we should be increasingly worried about is what is — or isn’t — in our nurseries.