Partial fertility recuperation in Spain two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic a host of countries saw drastic fertility declines, followed by a variety of fertility patterns. It remains unclear whether these initial baby busts have been recuperated, and, if so, whether the recuperation occurred homogenously across maternal age groups and parity categories. OBJECTIVE We assess period fertility recuperation as the cumulative difference between observed fertility trends and a predicted counterfactual trend simulating fertility patterns without the pandemic. We focus on Spain, the European country that suffered the most severe fertility decline during the pandemic.