COVID-19 pandemic for demographers was what the 9/11 events in the US were for experts in the Middle Eastern affairs. A sudden upgrade from an esoteric and who-knows-how-useful discipline to something actually interesting. At first, the focus was on mortality, understandably so. The concept of ‘excess mortality’ started travelling across publications read by ‘normal people’ and the humanity learned that the ‘force of death’ is (a) quantifiable and (b) obeys certain rules. Which also means that the effects of the pandemic could be captured in numbers and compared across countries, ethnic groups and medical systems. A small step for demographers themselves but a big step for humanity. So far so good.

COVID-19 pandemic is over, at least the governments across the enlightened world decided that it is…and when the Government says, pandemic stop, is it not?….Irrespective of that, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are not over. It is now the turn of fertility, not mortality, to come under scrutiny. What happened to people’s desire to have children? Did COVID-19 pandemic change that somehow? In the early days of the pandemic, there was a lot of speculation about that. That too is understandable. The effects of mortality on the society are immediate, the effects of fertility are delayed. One needs to wait, well, 9 months at least to find out how the pandemic affected childbearing. And so the demographers waited….Which does not mean that they remained silent. Intellectuals, and some of the demographers are exactly that, find it difficult to remain silent for a long time.

So, building on partial knowledge of previous crises that may or may not have been similar to COVID-19, some predicted declines in fertility. Why? Pandemics bring turbulence into people’s lives-they said. Some loose their jobs, others think that they may loose their jobs-they said. Markets are volatile-they said. Everyone sinks into a ‘who knows’ mood. There is one word that sums that up-they said -and the word is ‘uncertainty’. And when people are uncertain , or afraid, they tend to postpone the (next) child. That may end up in postponement as originally planned, or in never actually having that child.

Whilst intellectuals intellectualised, statistical offices across the world continued to collect data on fertility. The data are in now, let us thank the official statisticians and the experts operating the Human Fertility Database, a major analytical aggregator of fertility data across the world. We can now reflect on that speculation vs the reality issue looking at the Total Fertility Rate, a combined measure of fertility across all ages. The bottom line: across the Western world, liberally defined, COVID-19 pandemic had no adverse effect on fertility. In many locations, COVID-19 pandemic caused an increase in fertility. Let us unpack that now.

The first and the most conspicuous illustration of the above is found in Scandinavia. This part of the world has all its indices of fertility in early and in good order. Their time series reach to 2022, which allows us to see: (1) year 2020-the year in which the pandemic struck but when no effects on fertility could be observed, and (2) year 2021 in which the most immediate effect of the pandemic could be observed. Given that the pandemic started, give or take a few, in March 2020, decisions to do something about fertility would become clear exactly in 2021, or 9+ months after. Year 2022 would show a post-pandemic effect, if there is any.

Source: Human Fertility Database, Sept 2024

The story of increase in TFR is not unique to Scandinavia. There are parts of Western and Eastern Europe that behave much the same way. In Switzerland, Belgium, Bulgaria and Czechia the presentation is not as magnificent. Not all of them have data for year 2022 already available – which makes the 2021 uptick less visible. Still, the fact that in these countries the TFR in 2021 is higher than in 2020 is clear. The 2021 TFR is 3.5% higher than the 2020 TFR in Switzerland and Belgium and 2% higher in Bulgaria and Czechia.

Source: Human Fertility Database, Sept 2024

Further, there are countries where no significant increase in TFR was seen in 2021 but no decrease took place either. These are the USA, England and Wales, France and Spain. To be honest, I understate their situation. The USA, England and Wales and France had a very small increase of 1% in TFR while Spain had actually none.

Human Fertility Database, Sept 2024 and The Office for National Statistics (England and Wales)

And what about Israel? Israel looks a lot like Scandinavia. To be precise, Israeli Jews do. Their fertility in 2021 is about 4% higher than in 2020, the uptick is visible with a naked eye. Israeli Druze also experienced an increase in fertility in 2021 compared to 2020 , about 3%, a little less than Jews, like in populations of Switzerland and Belgium, say. Israeli Muslims had a 1% increase, like the US and England and Wales.

Source: Central Bureau of Statistics-Israel

To sum up, a not entirely insignificant segment of the world experienced a pandemic-related increase in fertility. There are three caveats to this. First, there were also countries where decline in fertility too place in 2021. Of those well-documented countries with high-quality data, three stand out in this respect. These are Japan, Taiwan and, in Europe, Portugal. A word of warning: in Far Eastern cultures, popular beliefs regarding the lucky and lucky years to be born still impact on fertility. Famously, fertility fell dramatically in the year of the Fire Horse in Japan (1966) and in the Year of Tiger (2010) in Taiwan, both considered unlucky for births. Future will tell, when more data become available, whether negative reaction of childbearing to pandemic is more widespread and to what extent other factors should be considered.

The second caveat: in places where an increase in fertility was observed in 2021, not all segments of the society had an equal inclination to bring forward births. Data presented by Dr Marion Burkimsher, an expert in fertility, at the annual conference of the British Society for Population Studies in September 2024 (Bath, UK) showed that the increase was strongly driven by the decisions of couples who already had children to have another child. Fertility of childless couples (e.g. those considering having their first child) reacted less strongly, and in some instances it even fell.

Source: Dr Marion Burkimsher, BSPS Annual Conference, the University of Bath, 2024

And the third caveat…Even in places experiencing a rise in fertility in 2021, some couples with children may have chosen to postpone births (because of the economic uncertainty). The final outcome, an increase in fertility , is the net outcome of all sorts of decisions, it is just that the decisions to have another child owing to the surge of optimism or opportunism outweighed the pessimistic or the cautious spirit.

What happened then? Alongside the doom and gloom and the realistically unusually high deaths rates and the uncertainty of vaccinations and the lockdowns, something else was happening. Something that a lot of demographers could not predict, or decided not to. Something, almost parenthetically saying, that many midwives could. They are used to seeing surges in wards occupancy nine months after a ‘staying in’ times increase, because of storms or snowfalls, for example. Staying at home times increased during the pandemic, and with that, intimacy increased. Working schedules changed, some jobs came to an end, others appeared. A lot of couples saw the pandemic as an opportunity to open another chapter in their family lives and that is a sign of optimism about the future. And now the questions: Is this the story of the pandemic as you remember it? Is this the story of the pandemic as you were told? Is this the story of the pandemic as you, in fullness of time, would tell anyone who is too young to remember, for example? No, no and no-have been my personal answers until I looked at the data. Shall we ‘listen to the experts’ then?

The reason that midwives at times give stronger predictions than demographers is that midwives are more strongly wedded to empirics. They do not think that they know, they observe regularities and sometimes report back. That eventually makes them good predictors. Demographers also observe, that is their strength. But they have a greater inclination to intellectualise and sometimes do not spend as much time compiling the empirics as they should. That is my view of the things. If they go back to the empirics, demographers can become more helpful.

We now know what happened to fertility but the story is not over. Around year 2025 children born in 2021 will start primary school, and that promises to be a slightly larger cohort than the previous one, and the same will happen at the secondary school stage in 2031. In many contexts then, years 2026 (primary) and 2032 (secondary) will see smaller cohorts. Let us , the demographers, make sure that we convey the story of the COVID-19 pandemic and fertility to those who need to prepare for the changing cohort sizes. So, the changes do not happen ‘all of the sudden’, you know, and the demographers are not seen as being out of their depth ‘all of the sudden’, you know.