50 States of Data on Plummeting 2020 Birth Rates

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The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 700,000 people in the United States, and it may have also reduced the number of live U.S. births by more than 100,000.

Analysts at the National Center for Health Statistics talk about the sharp drop in the birth rate in a new paper based on final 2020 “natality” data, and in an earlier paper, based on provisional data, that was released in June.

The plummeting birth rate could be having an immediate effect on any efforts to market life insurance and disability insurance to new parents, and it may affect sales and underwriting for those products and other products for decades to come.

The rapid drop could also make U.S. demographers’ “population pyramid” diagrams look like pine cones.

A pyramid diagram uses horizontal lines to represent the size of each age group included. The oldest age groups go on top, and the youngest at the bottom.

U.S. birth totals have been dropping, gradually, for years. The new plunge could make the base much narrow.

Starting in 2035, when the people born in 2021 start to enter the workforce, managers of Social Security will have to take the small size of that age group into effect when assessing the program’s revenue stream and benefits obligations.

The Data

The teams found that the U.S. general fertility rate dropped 4% in 2020, to 56 births per 1,000 women ages 15-44, from 2019 to 2020.The fertility rate was down for just about every major group of women the researchers looked at.

Most of the babies conceived after the pandemic flared in the United States were born in September 2020 or later. Some women may have intentionally put off conceiving babies because of concerns about the pandemic, access to routine prenatal care, and access to hospital delivery rooms. In other cases, it’s possible that COVID-19 infections or lockdown-related stress may have reduced conception rates.

The new paper is a sequel to a report that Martin and other researchers released in June.

In the earlier paper, the researchers said:

• The number of babies born in the United States fell 5% between 2019 and 2020, to 3.6 million.
• Between the second half of 2019 and the second half of 2020, the number of live births fell 6%.
• In one state, the number of babies born between the second half of 2019 and the second half of 2020 fell 11%.

For a look at the five states with the biggest percentage decreases in the number of live births between the second half of 2019 and the second half of 2020, see the slideshow above.

For birth data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, see the chart below.

The Predictions

MetLife suggested in February, based on short-term disability insurance plan leave data, that the number of births involving mothers with short-term disability coverage could fall about 20%.

The Brookings Institution predicted, based on analysis of trends after the 1918 flu pandemic, that the pandemic could cut the number of 2021 births by more than 300,0000 in 2021.

The final birth figures suggest that natality fell in 202, but probably less than what the Brookings and MetLife forecasters predicted.

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