The U.S. birthrate is plummeting and getting lower, having fallen a whopping 19% since 2007. Although the baby bust has been on a one-way track for six straight years, government officials had speculated that stay-home orders during the pandemic would turn that around.
Their predictions were dashed, though, when the numbers rolled in: “There were 3,605,201 births in the United States last year, the lowest number since 1979,” The New York Times reported. In 2020, the largest decline occurred in December — when most of the births anticipated as a result of the start of the shutdown should have occurred.
Why the baby boom didn’t occur is still out for discussion, but some experts say that the constraints of the pandemic, coupled with the wide range of choices women have these days in preventing or delaying pregnancy, may have encouraged couples to purposely prevent pregnancies.
Statistics show that, historically, economic crises, job uncertainty and income loss all contribute to a dip in birthrates.
SOURCE: The New York Times May 5, 2021