Babies Bumped

Learning from the Surprising Baby Bust of 2020

In the early days of the Covid pandemic, jokes about a coming baby boom were common. What would be more natural, many thought, than for couples now stuck at home together to do what couples have always done? How many new little bundles of joy would the United States expect to see in nine months?

Nine months and more have come and gone, and instead of a boom, most reports are now indicating a continued "baby bust." Official birth data from the final months of 2020 indicate that there were nearly 40,000 "missing births" in the U.S. last year, according to one Brookings Institution estimate.¹ To obtain this number, the researchers first compared fertility rates in the final quarter of 2019 to those in the final quarter of 2020, and then took into account that American birthrates have been falling steadily for some decades now. Assuming a gradual rate of decline, the researchers estimated that there should have been an "extra" dip of 4.3 percent in 2020 over 2019. But the actual decline was twice as large, 8.6 percent.

A corresponding CBS story reported similar news. As of March 3, 2021, health departments in roughly half of the United States were reporting a drop in births of 7 percent for the month of December—about nine months after the first lockdowns began.² Reports also indicate that the U.S. birthrate dropped last year to its lowest point in over a century.3

The birthrate decline is not unique to the United States. A remarkable Lancet article from last year predicted that the global population was set to peak at 9.73 billion in 2064, and then begin falling—rapidly. By 2100, according to The Lancet's predictions, the world's population will already have fallen by a billion people.⁴

Looming Ramifications

These rate declines matter, according to the experts. Because developed societies have gotten better and better at keeping people alive, there have naturally been huge increases in the numbers of elderly people. As demographer Dowell Myers of the University of Southern California told CBS, "We need to have enough working-age people to carry the load of these seniors, who deserve their retirement, they deserve all their entitlements, and they're gonna live out another 30 years. . . . Nobody in the history of the globe has had so many older people to deal with." As nations continue to pay out entitlements to their older citizens while having fewer and fewer working-age adults available to contribute to their support, serious economic problems loom—some even predict economic collapse. As a result, countries like Japan and China have begun aggressive government PR campaigns to get couples to have more babies.

What are the reasons for the coming population crash? Though theories differ, they don't necessarily cancel each other out. In the U.S., suggested reasons for declining birthrates include skyrocketing housing and education costs, more women in the workforce, not enough governmental support for families, a delay in the age of first childbirth, and growing uncertainty about the future (especially in the year of a global pandemic). Some Asian countries, like China, are now seeing the results of decades-long, government-enforced depopulation programs. Others, like Japan, are witnessing the pinch that a booming economy and ultra-competitive workplace have put on young men and women alike.

Faith & Fear

There is something to be said for all of these reasons. But I'm going to posit another theory, one that may well underlie all the others: a global loss of faith. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the late Ronald Inglehart, founder of the World Values Survey, argues for the pertinence of what he calls "the global decline in religion."⁵ Since 2007, Inglehart maintains, religiosity has dropped in all but five of the 49 countries he studied—in both developed and developing nations alike.

Inglehart views this decline as a natural result of modernization and increased physical and financial security. He summarizes his argument thus: "As societies develop from agrarian to industrial to knowledge-based, growing existential security tends to reduce the importance of religion in people's lives, and people become less obedient to traditional religious leaders and institutions." On this view, the world is less afraid, and therefore needs (or thinks it needs) religion less. Faith is perceived as some sort of emotional crutch, useful for people when death and disease run rampant, but no longer necessary when technological and medical advances have made life easier and more secure.

Alas, what if Inglehart has it backward? What if it was faith in God that kept fear at bay for previous generations, allowing them to pursue occupations and families even during times of great uncertainty? What if belief in God's sovereignty, and the knowledge that this earth is not our true home, gave a sense of purpose and deep joy to man for millennia? What if it was this joy that allowed parents to find meaning in their daily toils, to see beauty and sanctity in life and family, and to not allow setbacks like hard economic times or even sickness to steal their peace?

The baby bust of 2020–2021 may have much to teach us about our own human frailty, and about our need for God to save us. 

Notes
1. Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip Levine, "The coming COVID-19 baby bust is here," Up Front, The Brookings Institution (May 5, 2021): brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/05/05/the-coming-covid-19-baby-bust-is-here.
2. "Experts sound the alarm on declining birth rates among younger generations: 'It's a crisis,'" CBS News (March 3, 2021): cbsnews.com/news/birth-rate-declining-younger-generations-crisis.
3. "U.S. birth rate falls to lowest point in more than a century," Associated Press (May 5, 2021): nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-birth-rate-falls-lowest-point-more-century-n1266349.
4. Stein Emil Vollset et al., "Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study," The Lancet (July 14, 2020): thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext.
5. Ronald F. Inglehart, "Giving Up on God: The Global Decline of Religion," Foreign Affairs (September/October 2020): foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2020-08-11/religion-giving-god.