COVID‐19 Policy Interventions and Fertility Dynamics in the Context of Pre‐Pandemic Welfare Support

This paper focuses on nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to explain fertility dynamics during the pandemic, while considering countries' institutional context. We argue that containment policies disrupted people's lives and increased their uncertainty more in countries with weak welfare support systems, while health‐related and economic support NPIs mitigated such disruptions much more there, as they were less expected by citizens. We estimate monthly "excess” crude birth rates (CBRs) and find that countries with low public support—Southern Europe, East Asia, and Eastern Europe—experienced larger decreases and less of a rebound in CBRs than countries with histories of high public spending—Western, Central, and Northern Europe. However, in low support countries, NPIs are much more strongly associated with excess CBRs—containment NPIs more negatively and health and economic support NPIs more positively—with the exception of the one‐month lag of containment NPIs, for which the opposite holds. When putting these coefficients into broader perspective, our findings suggest that the actual implementation of all NPIs taken together mitigated fertility declines. This is especially the case for low public support countries, whereas one might have seen a birth decline even in high support countries if the NPIs were not implemented. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Population & Development Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Early assessment of the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and births in high-income countries.

Drawing on past pandemics, scholars have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic will bring about fertility decline. Evidence from actual birth data has so far been scarce. This brief report uses data on vital statistics from a selection of high-income countries, including the United States. The pandemic has been accompanied by a significant drop in crude birth rates beyond that predicted by past trends in 7 out of the 22 countries considered, with particularly strong declines in southern Europe: Italy (-9.1%), Spain (-8.4%), and Portugal (-6.6%). Substantial heterogeneities are, however, observed.