Data from the CDC shows CT births increased 6.5 percent from 2020 to 2021
Connecticut saw the second highest increase in births from 2020 to 2021 in the United States, according to national data released by the CDC. The state had 33,460 births in 2020 and 35,646 in 2021 — over a 6.5 percent increase — according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Vital Statistics, which provides annual birth data by state. New Hampshire was in the top spot with a 6.9 percent increase, and in fact, six of the top 10 states are found in the northeast (and Rhode Island trailed just behind at No. 11). The state with the highest decrease in births in that time frame was New Mexico with a -4.5 percent change.
Before the pandemic, Connecticut had a relatively low birth rate. In 2019, the U.S. had a national birth rate of 11.4 births per 1,000 women, while Connecticut had a birth rate of 9.6 per 1,000 women—the fourth lowest in the whole country. Now, the state is seeing a sudden increase of births. Yale University Assistant Professor of Sociology and Biostatistics Emma Zang said the current increase from 2020 to 2021 is largely due to delays in parenthood as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.
“At the beginning of COVID, a lot of people who were thinking about having babies decided to delay until the situation got better,” Zang said. “A lot of the fertility jump we see in 2020 to 2021 is very likely due to the postponing effects in the previous year.”
Though COVID is still a part of daily life, most Americans have returned to some sense of normalcy. Zang says that once people realized the virus was here to stay, they developed coping strategies to live in the new reality. She says many people decided they no longer wanted to put off having a child.
Lindsay Fondacaro and her partner lived in New York City prior to 2021. She says that they were waiting to have a baby in the hopes that they could get a nicer apartment in the city. However, when the pandemic hit, they left New York and bought a house in Danbury, where the two decided the time was right to have a child.
"We were going to wait a few years, but I actually turned 30 in 2021 and I had been kind of feeling like we have this clock as ladies. I thought maybe now that we have a house, it might be a good idea," Fondacaro said. "We just decided that we would take away all of the boundaries and it happened pretty immediately."
Women in the U.S. as a whole had more births in 2021 than 2020. Although this increase in births nationally is not a large change, 1 percent, Connecticut's rate of increase is six times that. Zang says that Connecticut policies geared toward supporting working families seem to be effective, and that the target demographic must be feeling supported by them given the increase in births.
Fondacaro says that certain Connecticut policies made her feel supported during pregnancy and once her son was born in October 2021. She said during pregnancy she was on the Husky program, which provides healthcare coverage for eligible Connecticut women throughout their time carrying the child and 60 days postpartum. In addition, Fondacaro says that she felt her son was also well covered after his birth.
"My son had healthcare right off the bat. I didn't have to file any paperwork or really anything," Fondacaro said. "I felt instantly covered and was able to go to the pediatrician without any paperwork and that made me feel really comfortable."
In addition to herself, Fondacaro said four of her best friends were also pregnant at the same time as she was, with some of them having newborns just weeks apart. She says that her story is one of many, and that several people she knows made the same move from New York City to Connecticut once the pandemic hit. She guesses that this narrative could be behind the high change in Connecticut births for 2021.
Whatever the reasom, Professor Zang says she this increase in births is likely temporary, and that this baby boom is more like a blip. However, she does feel there is some potential for this trend to continue in Connecticut under the right circumstances.
“During the pandemic, a lot of policymakers started to realize how hard working families had been hit by COVID,” Zang said. “We have already seen some policy changes in a good direction. In the long run, if that's the case, we may expect a continued increase in birth rate, but I don't expect the magnitude will be as big as we saw this year.”
The U.S has been grappling with slow population growth for some time now. Last year, the country grew by 0.1 percent– the slowest rate in the nation's history. As a product of increased deaths from the pandemic and low birth rates, the U.S is becoming an aging population.