Here’s good news from government statistics: The second year of the Covid-19 pandemic surprisingly resulted in a tiny “baby bump.”
In 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control, about 51,000 more American babies were born than in 2020.
Catherine Rampell, an economics columnist for The Washington Post, noted that the U.S. birthrate has been trending downward for many years, “and it usually fell more sharply when the economy was in trouble” — which perfectly describes the shutdown economy of 2020.
Yet the number of births increased in 2021, when recent history would have predicted a continued decline.
Now, an increase of 51,000 births is not going to put a stop to this downward trend. In 2007, according to a chart with Rampell’s column, the birth rate was more than 14 per 1,000 people. The chart shows a slow, steady decline in this figure all the way through 2020, when it was at 11.
The birth rate, rounded off, remained at 11 per 1,000 people in 2021, the last year for which figures are available. Rampell has a couple of suggestions to explain the 2021 increase.
First, the federal government “was more generous than in earlier bouts of economic hardship,” which is an understatement given the trillions of dollars shoveled out to individuals and businesses in 2020 and 2021. By some measurements, the generosity made Americans more financially secure despite the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Another likely factor is the change in working conditions brought on by the pandemic — specifically the decision by many employers to have their people work from home.
Rampell quoted an economist for a “PBS News Hour” story on the 2021 baby bump who said the increase in births largely came from women with more education, probably because they are more likely to have white-collar jobs that can be done remotely. The birth rate for women who had less than a college education continued to decline in 2021.
Rampell believes that home vs. office work arrangements, along with quality child care, will make a difference in whether the birth rate ends its downward trend.
This is a bigger issue than many people realize. If Americans do not have enough children to grow the population, eventually it will hurt the economy in many ways. Fewer workers generally produce less stuff, and it also shrinks the contributions that are essential to popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Increased immigration (of the legal kind) is one way to get around these problems, but the political barriers on that topic are large.
One more statistic explains the dilemma. The U.S. fertility rate, meaning the number of children the average woman has in her lifetime, needs to be 2.1 just to replace the existing population. For all but two years since 1990, it has been below that level, and was just 1.66 in 2021. Ultimately this will force some tough decisions.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
