Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine, Brookings
The data confirm what many suspected and what we predicted back in June 2020 and further discussed in December 2020: nearly 40,000 “missing births” in the final month and a half of 2020, which would have otherwise been conceived in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were 53.9 births per 1,000 women (at an annualized rate) in the last quarter of 2020, in October, November, and December. That is substantially lower than the 57.6 annualized births per 1,000 women in the last quarter of 2019. Birth rates have fallen steadily in the U.S. since 2007. Assuming births would have fallen between 2019 quarter 4 and 2020 quarter 4 at the same rate by which they fell between 2018 quarter 4 and 2019 quarter 4 (specifically, 2.3 percent), the observed drop between the final quarters of 2019 and 2020 incorporates a 4.3 percent “excess” decline.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/05/the-coming-covid-19-baby-bust-is-here/
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