Lockdowns May Have Caused ‘Baby Bump’ As Young Women Start Families And More Mothers Work From Home

Government lockdowns enacted in response to the spread of COVID may have caused the “first major reversal” in nearly two decades for American fertility rates, according to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The analysis, written by economists Martha Bailey, Janet Currie, and Hannes Schwandt noted that forecasts originally predicted a dramatic baby bust of 300,000 children to 500,000 children as a result of the lockdowns. Instead, births declined by only 76,000 more than the baseline, while American-born mothers saw a net increase in births...