COVID-19 slows birth rate in US, Europe

Date:
September 15, 2021
Source:
Cornell University
Summary:
Throughout history, pandemics have been a key driver of human
population change, thanks to mortality and declining fertility
rates. And, according to a new study, COVID-19 is no exception.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Throughout history, pandemics have been a key driver of human population change, thanks to mortality and declining fertility rates. And, according
to a new study co-authored by Seth Sanders, the Ronald Ehrenberg Professor
of Economics in the ILR School, COVID-19 is no exception.


========================================================================== Births declined 7.1% in the United States, according to the study,
"Early Assessment of the Relationship Between the COVID-19 Pandemic and
Births in High-Income Countries," published Sept. 7 in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.

In their research, Sanders and his co-authors reported on the
relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and births for 22 high-income countries. They found particularly strong declines in southern Europe:
Italy (-9.1%), Spain (- 8.4%) and Portugal (-6.6%), while Denmark,
Finland, Germany, and The Netherlands saw no decline at all.

Of the results, the authors wrote, "When compared to the large fall
in southern Europe, the relative stability of [crude birth rates] in
northern Europe points to the role of policies in support of families
and employment in reducing any impact on births." Said Sanders:
"The bottom line is that there was a lot of variation across countries
in the decline. We don't address why, but we think a lot of it has to
do with the degree of economic disruption, coupled with the degree of
social support in the absence of employment." To conduct their study,
the researchers used monthly live birth data from January 2016 to March
2021, which corresponds to conceptions (carried to term) from April 2015
to June 2020. They then matched information on monthly live births with mid-year population estimates from the United Nations (UN) Population Division's World Population Prospects to establish their formula.

The authors only included countries that belong to the high-income group, according to the World Bank, and that had both population and birth data available up to at least November 2020.

The paper was co-authored by Arnstein Aassve, Nicolo` Cavalli, Letizia Mencarini and Samuel Plach, all from the Universita` Commerciale Luigi
Bocconi in Italy.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Cornell_University. Original written
by Julie Greco, courtesy of the Cornell Chronicle. Note: Content may be
edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Arnstein Aassve, Nicolo` Cavalli, Letizia Mencarini, Samuel
Plach, Seth
Sanders. Early assessment of the relationship between the COVID-19
pandemic and births in high-income countries. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 2021; 118 (36): e2105709118 DOI:
10.1073/ pnas.2105709118 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210915135129.htm

--- up 1 week, 6 days, 8 hours, 25 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1:317/3)