Yes, The COVID “Baby Bust” Is Real — Unless You’re Rich Refinery29 3/3/2021 Natalie Gontcharova The “baby boom” predicted at the beginning of the pandemic is now widely acknowledged to have been a baby bust. Though there was an assumption that people would take the opportunity to procreate while stuck at home, instead states have reported large declines in birth rates for December 2020, nine months after lockdowns began in March. This shouldn’t come as such a surprise. As long ago as June 2020, the Brookings Institution predicted that there would be up to half a million fewer babies born in 2021 than in 2019 (3.3 vs. 3.8 million) due to the economic recession resulting from the pandemic. (They recently announced they believe that prediction is still on track.) They based this expectation on fertility trends during past cataclysmic events like the 1918 Spanish Flu and the 2008 recession; after the latter, the birth rate decreased by 9%. This would make 2021’s birth rate an all-time historic low.