The Future of Baby Busts

  COVID-19 drop in global birth rate  (Teresa Crawford/AP)

"Perhaps in an early phase of the pandemic, people might have also worried how safe it was to seek more medical care during the pandemic and so might have postponed getting pregnant out of concerns for the health of themselves and the baby."

"I think these worries have largely subsided in Canada, and now the biggest factor is whether people think their economic situation is stable enough or promising enough to support a child."

"Think the opposite of the baby boomer. If we see a drop in only one or two years, then the impact overall on the labour market, the financial sustainability of our pension and healthcare system would be limited."

"But if we see a sustained drop, this can lead to a permanent downsizing in the education sector and would have implications for the labour market and public expenditure programs."

Elisabeth Gugl, family economist, associate professor, University of Victoria

"We're more than half a kid short of replacement value."

"The evidence is clear. Birth rates have collapsed. We are pushing against something that is already failing. The patterns were already well-established."

"All of our population growth comes from immigration, which has been choked off [by the exigencies brought to bear through the global pandemic]." 

"You don't even have to look at the statistics, you just have to look at  your own family. Just look at the number of nieces and nephews and grandchildren and compare that to the previous generation."

"Nordic countries are the great test of whether incentives work. And their birth rates are no different than other parts of the world."

Darrell Bricker, CEO, Ipsos Public Affairs, co-author, Empty Planet

"What is interesting about the pandemic is that it's global. If the world is experiencing a reduction in the number of children, and you want to fill that gap with immigration, then you can't offset it with immigration."

"Every system will have its strengths and weaknesses intensified and amplified."

Nora Spinks, CEO, The Vanier Institute of the Family

 

Demographers and policy makers are closely watching numbers on global fertility, already in steep decline even before the pandemic struck. Now that it has it is assured that what is certain about the future of families is a baby bust. Total fertility rate representing the number of children a woman would bring into the world over the course of her reproductive life, had declined to 1.47 births per woman in Canada in 2019, representing the lowest figure ever recorded by Statistics Canada. The number of babies born for the population to replace itself represents the replacement rate.

The Brookings Institution in the United States, a public policy organization, for its part has predicted a "large, lasting baby bust" leading to a decline of 300,000 to 500,000 births in the coming year in the U.S. Woman who are already mothers have suffered a disproportionate impact from the pandemic, facing challenges with child care, compromised by a tough labour market. In Spain, 79 percent of women who had planned having children are now thinking twice about those plans. American women experiencing doubts along the same line in the U.S. stands at 38 percent.

Right across the G20 nations declining fertility rates have been recognized as educational levels for women have risen and these ambitious women launch careers. Women in France gave birth to 2.5 children in the 1970s, but by 2018 the birth rate in France had diminished to 1.8. In the U.S. women had an average of 2.5 children in the '70s, and by 2018 that number had dropped to 1.7, while in Italy the average was 2.4 children in the '70s, dropping to 1.3 by 2018.

 

If fewer babies are born in 2021 as a result of the pandemic, there will be fewer adults to generate the income tax revenues required to support our aging population as they draw on the Canada Pension Plan and use hospital services. (KieferPix/Shutterstock )

 

There may be less of a fertility fall in Canada than will occur in the U.S., believes family economist Elisabeth Gugl, even as she predicts women will postpone their first child and ultimately families will decide on a more limited number of children than they might originally have envisioned pre-pandemic. And there is the reality that the proportion of fertile women in the population is growing smaller and smaller as women hold off longer into their mid-30s and beyond to have children.

The Canadian government saw two-thirds of immigrants failing to arrive in Canada as a result of travel barriers linked to the pandemic, and it has now announced new immigration targets; 401,000 for 2021, 411,000 for 2022, and 423,000 for the following year even while acknowledging that an aging population matched with a low birth rate is the cause of economic and fiscal pressures they hope larger immigration figures will help to ease. Greater numbers in the workforce is required to provide the tax base funding benefits like health care.

Daryl Bricker of Ipsos Public Affairs pricks that balloon, reasonably pointing out that the largest number of migrants derive from India, China and the Philippines countries which themselves are experiencing fertility collapse numbers. Added to which fertility decline is seen as well among immigrant families coming from countries where large families are common. The world over, countries are struggling with ways to convince women to have more children. The same social upheavals where rural dwellers move to urban areas where they are unlikely to have as many children plays out all over the globe.

A gap exists between "fertility aspirations" accounting for the number of children women plan having, and the number they actually deliver, according to a UN working paper on policy responses to low birth rates. "The incompatibility between professional career and family life" steers highly educated women toward delaying motherhood or abandoning it altogether, points out the paper from the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA. As well, the report notes additional factors discouraging women from bearing children; the trend toward "intensive parenting" among them, demanding significant time and investment in children's education and extra-curricular events.

Societies of strong traditional gender role norms according to the UNFPA paper, are seeing very low fertility. Parental leaves are being recognized as a most likely social tool for a positive effect on fertility along with job security. Should a certain proportion of parental leave be allocated to each gender on a "use it or lose it" basis the paper sees a way to convince both parents to share responsibilities. Yet the fact is, there is no "magic bullet" to convince fathers they should be more involved in child care.

A street artist performs with soap bubbles at Rossio square during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in downtown Lisbon, Portugal October 31, 2020. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante/