Amid the gloom of the pandemic, a baby boom began

COVID-19 accomplished what would-be grandparents and government actuaries could not: It persuaded millennials to have kids. So. Many. Kids.

Recently released data show a mini baby boom in the wake of the pandemic.

In 2021, for instance, roughly 51,000 more American babies were born than in 2020. This was somewhat unexpected. For many years, the U.S. birthrate had been trending downward, and it usually fell more sharply when the economy was in trouble. Early in the pandemic, the birthrate did fall, likely reflecting a temporary decline in immigration. But then: Lots of people decided to reproduce.

Why? Policy provides one possible answer. The federal government was more generous than in earlier bouts of economic hardship, offering expanded unemployment benefits, extra-large stimulus checks and a bigger child tax credit. American families had more financial security than they usually have during economic crises. Poverty levels after accounting for government programs reached record lows in 2020 and 2021.

That’s not the only variable that changed. Americans had a chance to reevaluate their priorities because working conditions had changed for many of them.

Economists Martha J. Bailey, Janet Currie and Hannes Schwandt broke down birth-trend data and found major differences by age, race and other demographics. There was a big socioeconomic divide, for example.

“Women with more education were the ones that were having a lot more children,” Bailey told me for a PBS NewsHour story on the pandemic baby bump

Why might that be? Women with bachelor’s degrees are more likely to be employed in whitecollar occupations that can go remote. As of mid-2021, roughly two-thirds of employed, collegeeducated younger women were working from home at least some of the time, according to a government survey; that’s more than double the share of their highschool-graduate counterparts.

Many of the families I interviewed for the PBS NewsHour story said newfound workplace flexibility contributed to their decision to have a baby. Now some of those same new parents are scrambling to renegotiate with employers who want everyone back in the office. Whether work arrangements and child care, among other things, remain conducive to child rearing in the years ahead will be critical to the health, wealth and happiness of the country.

Women are still having many fewer children than they themselves say they want: In surveys, women say the ideal number of children is, on average, 2.3. Even accounting for the recent baby boom, the expected number of children a woman will have over her lifetime is closer to 1.66.

For the economy to continue improving, the United States also needs a growing labor force. Given slower population growth, political challenges to immigration, and the depressed share of working-age Americans who are participating in the labor market, the pool of available workers is expected to shrink. Growth in productivity has slowed as well. This has consequences for living standards and the solvency of major government programs.

Social Security and Medicare face long-term funding challenges due to the shrinking labor force paying into the programs. Unless Americans suddenly start producing a lot more children, or the nation admits a lot more immigrants, the government will either have to cut benefits or increase payroll taxes.

It’s great that we’ve seen a brief upward blip in baby making. It would be better if we came up with more permanent policy solutions that help that upward blip to continue — allowing families to have the number of children they want, and the economy to have the number of workers it needs.