Delayed family planning: How Covid-19 restricted childbirths like in previous pandemics
India Today
Find out how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the fertility rates and family planning in various countries.
The Covid-19 pandemic not only claimed more than 60 lakh lives but also forced people to delay family planning. This trend is more evident in developed countries like the US, France, Portugal, Spain, and Israel.
In the US, the fertility rate in January 2020 was 1.69, which fell to 1.54 in December 2020. Similarly, the fertility rate in Portugal dropped from 1.54 to 1.4, and in Spain, it fell from 1.25 to 0.97 in the same interval. Spain registered one of the highest falls in the fertility rate while it also saw the maximum Covid-19 deaths per million population during the first wave.
India was no exception as births saw a dip during the first year of the pandemic. Compared to 2.48 crore live births in 2019, India registered 2.42 crore births in 2020, according to the Civil Registration System.
However, this is not the first time that fertility rates fell amid a pandemic. History shows that every pandemic comes with a scare that keeps people away from planning pregnancy.
“The Spanish flu (1918-1920) caused fertility rates to plunge, reaching a low point six to nine months after the pandemic’s peak morbidity and mortality,” the United Nations Population Fund noted.
During the economic hardship and uncertainty after the Great Depression, the total fertility rate in the US fell from around 2.5 in 1929 to around 2.2 births per woman in 1939, which was more than five years after the crisis. After the economic crisis of 2008 too, fertility rates declined in North America and Europe.
Likewise, people were reluctant to plan babies during the Covid-19 pandemic because of economic uncertainty, a health crisis, and low gynaecological support in hospitals.
