Rapid changes in birth counts in Brazilian major cities during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Brazil has been among the countries that have been heavily affected by this novel disease. From March 2020 onwards, records of deaths in Brazil increased as the number of COVID-19 infections skyrocketed. Consequently, many studies have tried to explain how this illness has affected the overall number of deaths since the start of the pandemic, and have examined the question of whether mortality related to COVID-19 has led to reductions in life expectancy. However, at the time of writing, there have been few empirical analyses of the effects of the pandemic on births. In this study, we sought to investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the recent birth counts of six large cities in Brazil by assessing the most up-to-date vital statistics data that are available. Using data from the municipal health departments of these cities, we compared the number of monthly births from October–December 2020 and January–March 2021 with the number of new-borns in similar months and years before the pandemic. Our results show that there was a strong decline in the number of births in some of the cities analysed, and that most of the reductions occurred among women around the age of 30 years old. It appears that because of the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, women have been postponing or foregoing the realisation of their fertility intentions, which may have led to a temporary baby bust in some cities of Brazil. However, the COVID-19 pandemic was not found to be associated with faster reductions in births in all Brazilian cities. Indeed, in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, the decreasing trend in birth counts appears to have slowed down, or even reversed.

Fertility Responses to the COVID‐19 Pandemic: A Perspective of Reproductive Process

“…Second, aggregate‐level changes in births, conceptions, and pregnancy terminations may not reflect the impacts of the pandemic due to the existence of temporal and seasonability effects. This observation is in line with recent studies on fertility responses to the pandemic, which consider these confounding factors (Lima, Soares, and Silva 2022; Silverio‐Murillo et al. 2023).…”

Pregnancies and contraceptive use in four African countries during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…However, the existing evidence on the impacts of the pandemic on fertility in low-and middle-income countries is much more sparse due to the lack of timely data. Lima et al (2022) observed a large decline in the number of births in some Brazilian cities in late 2020 and early 2021 compared to previous years. Dasgupta et al (2020) prospectively considered a scenario of the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on contraceptive use in which the proportion of the need for family planning satisfied by modern methods is expected to decrease particularly sharply in sub-Saharan Africa.…”

From bust to boom? Birth and fertility responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

“…For most of the highly developed countries, these data confirmed the expected baby bust associated with the first wave of the pandemic and the lockdowns. Sharp falls in the number of births were also reported in middle-income countries of Latin America (e.g., Lima et al 2022, UN 2021 and in China (Zhang andLi 2021, UN 2021). However, analyzes covering longer period of the pandemic increasingly revealed a more differentiated picture, with birth trends varying substantially over time and across countries.…”