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.